Trib HSSN baseball player of the week for June 1, 2025

By: Don Rebel
Sunday, June 1, 2025 | 10:27 PM

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Trib HSSN baseball player of the week: Zach Hare

School: Riverside

Class: Senior

Position: Pitcher, first base

#Earned: Many high school coaches want their players and teams to improve as the season goes on, hopefully playing their best ball in the postseason. The success curve has been pretty high for Riverside right-handed pitcher Zach Hare all season, but there is little doubt that what he has done in the playoffs is beyond anything anybody has seen. The senior has put together a postseason run that will be remembered for a long time. His huge efforts helped the Panthers reach the finals for a third straight year, and his perfect talents were a big reason why the team is now a seven-time WPIAL champion. Heading into the state playoffs, Hare has not allowed a hit in his 24 1/3 innings this postseason. In the first-round win over Shady Side Academy, Hare pitched 5 1/3 hitless innings. He threw five more innings of hit-free ball in the quarterfinals win over Burrell, then started and pitched seven no-hit innings in the semifinals against South Park but did not get the win as the Panthers outlasted the Eagles in 12 innings, 1-0. In the district 3A final against surprising Quaker Valley, Hare was perfect. He faced 21 Quakers batters and retired every one of them, 15 by strikeout. For the exclamation point on his dominance, he had an immaculate sixth inning, with nine pitches and nine strikes to strike out the side. It was that same sixth inning when Panthers teammate junior Jackson Barber knocked home the only run in the game. While he amazingly became the second WPIAL pitcher to throw a no-hitter that day after Tyler Skaggs of Serra Catholic kept Carmichaels hitless in the Class A game, Hare is the seventh pitcher this century to throw a no-hitter in a WPIAL baseball championship game and might be the first to ever throw a perfect game.

Background: Hare will continue his academic and baseball career at Slippery Rock in the fall. He has had offers from bigger schools, but his fondness for the campus and coaches along with his desire to stay close to home so his family could watch him play were big parts in committing to SRU. Hare has been awesome all season: 8-0 with a 0.83 ERA. In 59 innings pitched, he has allowed only seven earned runs, 14 hits with 12 walks and 114 strikeouts. At the plate, Hare is Batting .413 (26 for 63) with four home runs and 26 RBIs. He has an on-base percentage of .486, a slugging percentage of .683 and an OPS of 1.169. Zach has one younger sister: Ashley is a freshman at Riverside and plays for the Panthers soccer team. As a ninth grader, she was a first team all-section midfielder. Hare also played wide receiver and outside linebacker for the football team at Riverside. This past season, he was the Panthers’ leading receiver with 38 receptions for 575 yards for an average of 15.1 yards per catch, plus he scored eight touchdowns and was first team all-conference. He also led the team in catches as a junior with 22 for 430 yards. Hare started playing football in middle school, but before that, he was a goalkeeper in youth soccer.

What coach says: “The fastball with that downward plane, he gets it over the plate,” Riverside coach Dan Oliastro told Trib HSSN after the title game. “He’s so consistent. If he told me was going to be ready, I knew it.

“I talk with these pitchers all the time. I’ve got to know where they are. If you don’t know your players, you can’t make the right decisions.

“When you get guys who throw as hard as they do, they’ve got their own regimens. Zach was out there doing his stuff (before the game) for at least an hour.

“Most of the teams only have one good pitcher. We’ve been privileged that we have three,” Oliastro said of his terrific trio of Zach Hare and fellow seniors Christian Lucarelli and Hunter Garvin.

2025 Trib HSSN Baseball Players of the Week

Week 8: Cy Herchelroath, Elizabeth Forward

Week 7: Johnny Bertucci, Riverview

Week 6: Tyler Skaggs, Serra Catholic

Week 5: Ryan Piekutoski , Seneca Valley

Week 4: Brock Budacki, New Brighton

Week 3: Ryan Lafferty, Plum

Week 2: Mason Metz, Avonworth

Week 1: Eli Graff, Thomas Jefferson

Tags: Riverside