Teams ready for Legion’s regional competition
Bux-Mont’s Hatfield-Towamencin, Souderton head to West Lawn for Region 2 play
The individual American Legion leagues are complete and the brackets are set for the regional tournaments.
Regional play begins Saturday July 15 and champions will be crowned Wednesday July 19.
Hatfield-Towamencin and Souderton earned regional bids from Bux-Mont, Fort Washington from Lower Montco and Presidential Caterers from the Greater Norristown American Legion Baseball League.
The teams will play nine innings in the regional tournaments compared to the seven innings they’ve been playing all season.
Region 2
HATFIELD-TOWAMENCIN » Hatfield-Towamencin won the Bux-Mont league tournament for the second straight year. A team composed almost entirely of North Penn players, the Titans start their Region 2 run against Salisbury. HT will be the second game of a double-header starting at 9 a.m. Saturday at Owls Field in West Lawn. The winner will face the winner of West Lawn and Muhlenberg Sunday.
The Titans posted a dominant season, but are also battle-tested. They won the regular season with a 17-4 record and went 5-0 in the playoffs
en route to a tournament championship. Four of those playoff games, however, were one-run wins. The title game featured a Nate O’Donnell walk-off single to lift HT over Souderton, 5-4.
HT has plenty of talent — five Bux-Mont All League selections in Zach Moretski, Atlee Hasson, Jared Gorman, Ryan Bealer and Zach Thomas — to make a run at the Region 2 title.
SOUDERTON » Souderton finished second in the BuxMont tournament and faces Norchester at 4 p.m. Saturday at Owls Field in West Lawn. The winner of that game will face the winner of Hellertown and South Parkland Sunday.
Much like Hatfield-Towamencin, Souderton has a ton of talent. Thylar Summarell (Bux-Mont Player of the Year), Nolan Bolton and Luke Barnum were all firstteam Reporter/Times Herald All-Area selections during the high school season and Brett Moyer was a second-team selection.
The tournament runnerups had a pedestrian regular season. They went 1010 and finished as the No. 5 seed in the 11-team league.
But they got hot in the playoffs.
Souderton tallied playoff wins against No. 4 Pottstown 8-0, No. 3 Perkiomen 9-5 and then after a 2-1 loss to No. 1 Hatfield, beat No. 6 Pennridge 7-6 to earn a spot in the regional tournament.
Souderton built a 4-1 lead after four innings against Hatfield-Towamencin Tuesday but couldn’t hold on and lost 5-4. Souderton would have needed to win that game and another over HT to claim the league playoff title.
Region 3
FORT WASHINGTON » Fort Washington won the Lower Montco League for the first time since 2014 and faces Falls in the first round of the Region 3 tournament Saturday at 4 p.m. at Ram Stadium at Spring-Ford High School. The winner faces the winner of Lionville and Springfield Sunday.
Fort Washington dominated the Lower Montco League. The Generals went 17-1 in the regular season — a full five games ahead of second-place Jenkintown.
But when the teams met for the first time in the playoffs, it was Jenkintown that came away victorious, 10-1. In their second post-season meeting, Fort won, 9-3, to set up a winner-take-all final.
In the championship game, Fort broke a 1-1 tie in the bottom of the sixth inning. Justin Horn was on first, trying to steal second. Matt Hebling hit a blooper to center field and Horn never broke stride. The throw to third base went wide and Horn raced home to score the winning run and give the Generals the title, 2-1, and a berth in the regional tournament.
PRESIDENTIAL CATERERS » Presidential Caterers won the Greater Norristown American Legion Baseball League and faces host Spring City in the first round of the Region 3 tournament at 7 p.m. Saturday night. The winner faces the winner of Roxborough and Broomall-Newtown Sunday.
Presidential Caterers had a slow start to the season before a white-hot finish. The champs went 3-8 out of the gate before getting their players back from senior activities. They won six straight games before finishing the regular season as the No. 3 seed with a 9-9 record.
PC scored 62 runs over its six playoff games. Their only playoff loss came to regular-season champ Whitpain 12-11 but they got their revenge.
Presidential beat Whitpain 16-14 Sunday to force a winner-take-all game Monday, which they won, 12-5.
PC feels like it has a chance against anyone with a potent offense that can hit one-through-nine. The real power comes from its threefour-five hitters — Joe Sortino, Nick Zambella and Dom Proietto.