Colby Weber shuts down Lampeter-Strasburg, sends Shaler back to PIAA championship game

By: Dave Mackall
Monday, June 9, 2025 | 6:43 PM

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CRESSON — Colby Weber and the Shaler baseball team are headed to another state championship game — their second in three seasons.

Two years after winning a Class 5A title, the WPIAL champs, behind Weber’s three-hitter with nine strikeouts and no walks, earned another trip to Penn State by ousting District 3 champion Lampeter-Strasburg, 2-0, in the semifinals Monday at Mt. Aloysius College.

Shaler (20-6) will meet District 1 runner-up Upper Dublin for a chance at another Class 5A championship at 4:30 p.m. Thursday at Medlar Field at Lubrano Park in University Park.

In the other semifinal at Kutztown University, Upper Dublin (17-5) claimed a 1-0 victory in eight innings against Elizabethtown of District 3 to earn a spot opposite the Titans in the championship final.

“We’ve battled all year long. We’re right there to do it again,” said Weber, who pitched six innings in relief as a sophomore in Shaler’s eight-inning, 9-8 victory against Strath Haven in the 2023 championship game.

He’s headed back to the final as a senior.

“It was my last time pitching for us, and it was awesome. It hasn’t hit me yet,” said Weber, who threw 88 pitches against Lampeter-Strasburg.

On Monday, with Weber, the 6-foot-7 East Carolina commit, in control on the mound, Shaler scored single runs in successive innings against Lampeter-Strasburg’s Devin Aponte, who yielded six hits over the first 4⅔ innings.

Ben Yeckel Jr. doubled home Troy Leas with the Titans’ first run in the fourth, and Kaleb Jockel singled home Brendan Fitzgerald with the second in the fifth.

It was all the offense Weber needed.

Still, the slim lead might not have felt safe until Jockel made a leaping grab of James Walls’ long line drive to right to lead off the seventh for Lampeter-Strasburg, a play that set the tone for a 1-2-3 inning for Weber and a lively postgame celebration for Shaler.

“That was a (great) play,” Weber said. “I mean, he’s on a dead sprint. Awesome catch by Kaleb. At first, I was iffy. But then, I saw him running across, and I thought, ‘Oh, he’s got it.’”

Weber encountered trouble just once against Lampeter-Strasburg (21-6) but stranded runners on second and third in the second inning by striking out Cayden See looking at a curveball for the third out.

He then retired nine of the next 10 Pioneers batters and 15 of the final 17.

“I asked Colby for a little more off-speed (pitches) early because that team hunts fastballs, and he did it,” Shaler coach Brian Junker said. “His curveball looked good. His changeup looked great.

“When he’s on like that, the 93 mph fastball looks 96.”

Leas produced two of Shaler’s seven hits, while Colby McGuire doubled to account for the Titans’ other extra-base knock.

Shaler improved to 4-1 in the PIAA semifinals by avenging a 5-1 loss to Lampeter-Strasburg in a PIAA first-round game in 2019.

Lancaster County-based Lampeter-Strasburg was seeking its third consecutive victory in the state playoffs against a WPIAL opponent but found Weber and Shaler to be too much.

“Second and third, one out there in the second,” Lampeter-Strasburg coach Jeff Swarr said. “Logan (Leaman) has had some really big hits for us this year. A 3-1 count and he pops up (for the second out). I feel like he just missed a pitch. But that’s also a good pitcher against a good hitter, and that’s what the game’s about.”

Weber then caught See looking for the final out, ending Lampeter-Strasburg’s best chance to score.

“He’s going to be around the plate. There’s a reason he’s going to East Carolina. He’s a good arm,” Swarr said. “I thought we had some good at-bats against him. We had three solid hits, and we had some other balls that we hit well.”

The Pioneers, whose lineup led off with six underclassmen, including three sophomores, opened the PIAA playoffs with a 2-1 victory over Peters Township in the first round before outlasting Pine-Richland, 9-6, in the quarterfinals.

“We lost in the first round last year and took a couple of steps forward this time,” Swarr said. “Our guys want to have some goals for the future, and we got a taste of what we need to get to.”

Junker, a former Shaler player who went on to play shortstop at Division II Edinboro, is coaching his alma mater for a 16th consecutive season. His teams have qualified for four PIAA tournaments.

The Titans lost to District 1’s North Penn in the 2015 semifinals and dropped that first-round game to Lampeter-Strasburg in 2019.

Now, they’ve reached the final twice in three years.

“It’s a reflection of how we do things. We have high standards,” Junker said. “We work hard in the classroom, and we worked hard in the weight room. We’re doing things right on and off the field. We stress that, and we play hard. We don’t think sometimes we’re as talented as some of these teams, but we’ll fight you ‘til the end. They carry that attitude with them, and then, we just focus on our process — throwing strikes, having quality at-bats and sprinting on and off the field.

“That’s how we win games.”

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