Pine-Richland notebook: Baseball team shows mettle with 5 wins in 5 days

By: Jerin Steele
Saturday, April 27, 2024 | 11:01 AM

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Five section games in five days?

No problem for the Pine-Richland baseball team.

The Rams swept the week, winning three against Seneca Valley and two makeup games over Allderdice.

Those victories set up a Section 1-6A championship showdown with North Allegheny.

The two teams were scheduled to play a three-game series April 29, 30 and May 2.

Pine-Richland was 8-1 in section play entering the series with the Tigers. North Allegheny was 7-1 with one game remaining in its series with Seneca Valley on Thursday, which was past the deadline for this edition.

Regardless of that result, the Rams-Tigers series will be meaningful for a section title, which has become a trend.

Each of the last two years, the Pine-Richland/North Allegheny series has had section championship implications.

The Tigers and Rams split the title in 2022 and were tri-champions with Seneca Valley last year.

Some highlights from the five victories in five days included a walk-off hit by Tommy Zimmerman in extra innings of Game 2 of the Seneca Valley series. It was Zimmerman’s first at-bat of the season. He had been out while recovering from a shoulder injury.

Pine-Richland had to use pretty much its entire pitching staff to get through the five-day stretch. Keegan Deihl, Nathan Kush, Reece Rupert, Chase Caricato Tristan Farrar, Tyler Vogel, Noah Mackie, Thomas Kapanowski and Drew Boivin all saw time on the mound.

Kapanowski made his varsity pitching debut and pitched 2 1/3 innings of shutout ball.

Sam Heckert had a big RBI double in the series opener against the Raiders. Peyton Ford threw a runner out at third base from center field in that game, which proved crucial in a 3-2 win. Danny Pedersen had three strong plays at shortstop, including on the final out of the game where he charged a weak chopper with the bases loaded and made a strong throw to first that beat the runner by a half-step.

Rams medal

A good showing at the Butler Invitational can be an indicator of an athlete’s prospects of medaling at the WPIAL championships, and Pine-Richland ended up with several solid finishes.

Lawrence Timmons (seventh in the 100 meter dash), Ryan Beam (second in javelin) and Jake Jones (sixth in pole vault) earned individual medals in boys events and Nadia Constantakis was the runner up in girls javelin at the 57th annual meet, which as held at Butler High School on April 19.

Pine-Richland also had two boys relay teams medal. The 400 relay team was seventh and the 1,600 relay team placed eighth.

The results at Butler came a week after the Rams had a couple of victories at the TSCTA meet at West Mifflin.

Beam won javelin with a throw that went 178 feet, 10 inches and Emery Moye took home the high jump, topping out at 6-1.

Other boys individual medalists at TSCTA were Carson Baer (seventh in the 400), Jones (second in pole vault) and Robert Hoy (eighth in pole vault).

Girls who medaled at TSCTA were Abby Santina (seventh in 300 hurdles), Riley Deer (third in high jump) and Paige Baratka (sixth in javelin).

The WPIAL 3A team track and field championship is slated for May 7 at West Mifflin. The WPIAL individual meet is May 15 at Slippery Rock University.

Rams duo falls

Pine-Richland’s tennis doubles team of Ian Hurt and Udi Akolkar lost 10-4 to Fox Chapel’s Travis Malone and Ben Hallman in the first round of the WPIAL Class 3A boys doubles tournament April 23.

Hurt and Akolkar were the 14th seed. They qualified for WPIALs by placing fourth in the Section 2-3A tournament.

Jerin Steele is a freelance writer

Tags: Pine-Richland