CB South played Souderton on April 30.
On Friday at Penn State’s Medlar Field, the two baseball programs will duel again with much more at stake … the PIAA 6A championship.
The District One runners-up, CB South (19-7) continued its Cinderella postseason run with a 11-6 win over District Seven’s North Allegheny (19-7) in Tuesday PIAA semifinal action in Chambersburg. South rode a monster, nine-run sixth inning to the win: its first nine batters reached base.
South will re-match against SOL Continental foe Souderton (23-4), who topped the Titans 3-0 when they last played. The teams duel at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, with South’s commencement triggering the odd start time.
Jake Trachtenberg got the Titans on the board with a first-inning RBI ground out. North Allegheny’s Joey Colella cleared the bases with a double in the top of the second.
Owen Petrich’s two-out fourth-inning single plated Trachtenberg and cut the lead to 4-2; two unearned runs in the fifth extended the Tiger lead to 6-2.
South did not make lefty reliever Ryan Partridge look like the Penn State commit he is: all six batters he faced in the sixth reached. The Titans started the inning with three walks, an error and single. Jake McKeown’s bases loaded single slashed the lead to 6-5. With still no outs, Joey Loynd thumped a two-run double, giving South its first lead.
Trachtenberg’s double and Dakota Beck’s single both drove in an insurance two runs.
Chalk said that the Titans should have been eliminated weeks ago. They were the 17th of 24 seeds in District One play. But South’s offense ignored the seedings; the Titans scored more runs than any team in the tournament.
South tacked on 17 runs in the first 15 innings of districts, propelling them to road wins against Coatesville and No. 1 seed Pennsbury.
Petrich, Trachtenberg, Loynd and Ryan Rieber all had multi-RBI games in district play.
In that 15th inning, the opening frame of district quarterfinals at Bensalem, CB South hung a six-spot on the host Owls en route to a 7-2 runaway win that punched its ticket to states.
While hot hitting got the Titans to states, pitching kept them in states.
Brock Veit threw seven walkless innings in the June 3 first round PIAA game against District 11 runner-up Emmaus. Connor McKeown played the offensive hero, driving in two runs in the sixth inning to put South up 3-1 and then banging a walk-off RBI double in the eighth to give the Titans a 4-3 win.
Three days later, Rieber allowed four hits in a complete game beauty as South topped District Three champion Wilson West Lawn 2-1. Zack Steinberg’s RBI single scored South’s winning run.
North Allegheny was trying for it’s PIAA record sixth title game appearance. Instead South, whose first state playoff win in history was Emmaus, makes the trek to State College.
