Bobcats’ late rally falls short
Beaver can’t overcome poor defensive outing
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Beaver had a mountain to climb Friday, and it wasn’t Mount Nittany, which sits prominently in the distance behind the outfield fence at Medlar Field at Lubrano Park.
Its loud, high-scoring offense silenced for six innings, Beaver trailed by six runs heading into the seventh of its PIAA Class 4A championship showdown with Selinsgrove.
The Bobcats nearly pulled it off, too. Beaver needed six, but only got three, and left the bases loaded in a 7-4 loss to Selinsgrove.
“We didn’t give up and you have to be proud of these dudes for that. They didn’t give up. That’s the biggest thing,” said first-year Beaver coach Noah Medich, who held back tears when talking to the media afterwards.
Two weeks after improving to 4-0 in WPIAL championship games, Beaver (17-8) fell to 0-3 in PIAA championship games. The Bobcats also came up short in 1983 and 2013. It was the first PIAA title for District 4 champion Selinsgrove, which finished 21-5.
Beaver had scored 65 runs in its previous seven playoff games, but Selinsgrove ace and Lock Haven recruit Blaise Zeiders was in full control through six innings, giving up just one run and three hits as the Seals built a 7-1 lead. That’s when Beaver, which used a huge seventh-inning rally to beat Yough in the WPIAL semifinals, decided to make some noise.
“We put up seven in the seventh against Yough, so we all knew it was possible,” said pitcher Jack Yanssens, one of Beaver’s 14 seniors.
Dom Petrella and Brady Hansen singled and Harrison Pontoli reached on a fielder’s choice to load the bases with no outs. Yanssens walked to bring in a run, which knocked Zeiders from the game. Vinny Mastrangelo was hit by a pitch to plate another run and Alec Berg pulled Beaver within 7-4 with a sacrifice fly. But after Zach Hansen walked, Selinsgrove freshman reliever Ryan Reich struck out Mason Rose and got Mike Champ to ground out to finish the game.
“Ryan Reich, our closer, went in and did an outstanding job,” Selinsgrove coach Brent Beiler said. “Our fielders were a little tense. We just needed to get those outs. It was nice that we built that cushion that we were able to get through that.”
That cushion came in the fifth when Selinsgrove scored five runs to extend its lead to 7-1. It was an ugly inning for Beaver, which made three errors in just a few minutes, including two on one play that scored the first run. Josh Nyland singled in a run and scored on the third error, and Ryan Aument later came through with a two-run triple.
Medich called it his team’s worst inning of the season.
“It was one bad inning,” he said. “If we limit that to two runs, three runs even, you have to find a way to get out of the inning. We started throwing the ball all over the place. I’ll probably have nightmares about that one.”
It looked as if Beaver might be on the way to a dream ending to its season when it took a 1-0 lead in the first on Yanssens’ run-scoring single.
But Selinsgrove responded quickly with an RBI double by Zeiders in the bottom of the inning, and then went ahead in the third when it scored on Beaver’s first error of the game — it finished with four.
“I think early on we made the moment too big for ourselves,” Medich said. “Once we simplified things a little bit, it seems like we settled down, but we just never got our feet underneath of us today.”