Senior Crickets’ title hopes still strong

HOLLIDAYSBURG - Zach Rote admits he was nervous.

"Oh my God. I was shaking like crazy," the Beech Creek starting pitcher said.

The pressure couldn't have been any more. The tying tally at second. The possible winning run coming to the plate in the form of Hollidaysburg's Brett Weibley, a Division I baseball player at Kent State.

Then, there was the vote of confidence from catcher Matt McGhee. As Beech Creek Post 623 manager Daren Stover began his jaunt out of the dugout to pull Rote, McGhee asked his coach to give Rote one more batter. And it paid off.

Rote forced a grounder to third baseman Brett Heggenstaller and the Senior Crickets survived for another day in a 4-3, CPL playoff victory over the previous undefeated Blair County squad.

"Matt sees things a lot better than I do from the dugout," Stover said. "I have a lot of confidence in him because he's caught a lot of games for me. I took his word for it, and it worked out."

What the BC victory does is make for one heck of an ending to the CPL Senior American Legion season today.

Three teams remain in the bracket, each with one loss: Beech Creek, Hollidaysburg and Mifflin County. At 6 p.m., the Crickets and Mifflin County will square off at the Shaner Complex, Potter Township. Immediately following that game, the victor will take on Hollidaysburg for the postseason tournament championship and the right to advance into this weekend's sectionals.

While Rote's pitching definitely contributed to the win, the part of hero might have been played by Heggenstaller.

The third baseman had his hand in 10 outs; one was a heads-up double play in the fourth inning that spelled real trouble for Beech Creek with runners on second and third and no outs.

He also plated the game-winning run when he drove a curve from Hollidaysburg's Nick Long over the 350-foot sign hanging on the left-center field fence in the seventh, giving Beech Creek a 4-3 lead.

"The home run was big because it did give us the lead," Heggenstaller said. "We've seen this pitcher before, so we knew what he had. We were ready to hit it. I was seeing it well, but we saw what he had."

Even though it was the third time Beech Creek (15-11) had faced Long this season, the pitcher was pretty effective. He finished with a complete-game seven-hitter, but ran into serious problems in the fifth.

Down 1-0, the Crickets got rolling on back-to-back one-out singles to center by Anthony Houser and Ryan Watkins. Heggenstaller followed with his second double of the evening, one that bounced over the fence nearly in the same spot as his seventh-inning shot, and Zuback knocked in both Watkins and Heggenstaller on a scorched double into the left-center field gap.

"In games like this, when you have a bad inning, you have to try and minimize how many runs score and we did a nice job with that," Hollidaysburg coach Chris Glass said. "They hit the ball that inning. When it all comes down to it, we didn't hit. We've been scoring a lot of runs lately, but we just didn't hit.

"He's (Long) been working on four-day rest, and that's what we've been doing all year long. It wasn't really a decision. He had his four days, and he threw a nice ballgame. If you don't score a lot of runs, you don't win games. That's the bottom line. Their kid didn't throw hard, and had a bunch of junk. We just couldn't hit him."

Rote, who doesn't bring an overpowering fastball, relies on solid defense and crafty pitches - such as curves, sliders and change-ups.

What he got was a solid effort from his teammates - which included Colten Stover basically running through a fence in left field on a pop-up by Aaron Kovach in foul territory - and made only one mistake in the game when he hung a pitch to Pat Smith that was crushed over the wall in left, knotting the game at 3 in the sixth.

The soon-to-be Central Mountain senior held a powerful Hollidaysburg lineup, averaging 12 runs each game in playoffs, to three runs on eight hits.

"James (Gallagher) was ready in case we needed him, but Zach really gutted it out." Daren Stover said. "I can't say enough about him because he threw a whale of a game. It's one game at a time. We are going for it. We got this far, and we're going to give it our all."

Hollidaysburg had opportunities.

In the third, a single by Neil Schroth and double by Andy Glass put runners on second and third with no outs. Kovach's sacrifice fly to left made it 1-0, but consecutive putouts by Heggenstaller got Beech Creek out of trouble.

A similar situation in the fourth with runners in scoring position and no outs. A weak grounder to Houser at short was the first out, and Heggenstaller pulled off a double play when he caught a pop-up by Jake Weibley and immediately touched third when Andy Young - who thought there were two outs in the inning - broke for home on the crack of the bat.

Andy Glass and Smith combined for four of Hollidaysburg's eight hits.

"I don't think we had the right approach to him," coach Glass said. "Some of our bigger hitters wanted to pull the ball and try to jack it. Basically, with a pitcher like that, you want to think about hitting the ball into the opposite field. We didn't do a good job of adjusting to that."

Besides Heggenstaller's three, Zuback, Cody Dolan, Houser and Watkins accounted for the other Crickets' hits

Beech Creek, which lost 13-4 at Hollidaysburg on July 17 to begin CPL playoffs, have won three straight through the elimination bracket to reach this point.

It still needs two more, though.

"We've been fighting," Rote said. "That's actually the attitude. It's like a pure fight back through this tournament. This team never dies, and we'll keep fighting."

Senior American Legion at Hollidaysburg

BEECH CREEK 4, HOLLIDAYSBURG 3

BC000 030 1 - 4 7 2

H001 002 0 - 3 8 0

BC: Rote and McGhee. H: Long and Cressman. WP - Rote. LP - Long. HR: BC, Heggenstaller. H, Smith. 2B: BC, Heggenstaller 2, Zuback. H, Glass, Kovach. MH: BC, Heggenstaller 3. H, Smith 2, Glass 2. Record: BC 15-11.