After COVID forced the cancellation of the 2020 season, every spring team entered Opening Day 2021 with a question mark.
CB East baseball and Quakertown softball both enter Opening Day 2022 with an exclamation point.
Quakertown gets to send Cabrini-bound senior Sydney Andrews to the ring nearly every day. Andrews posted a 15-3 record with a 1.56 ERA. She struck out 216 batters and walked just 24.
“When she works inside the strike zone, she is very effective,” noted Quakertown head coach Dave Scott. “She changes speeds very well and she is always changing the eye level of that batter. Her velocity last year was not where we wanted it to be and she has worked really hard in the off season. She hit the weights and has added another three to four mph on her fastball.”
The Patriots won’t get to utilize senior Aidan Weaver quite as often, but when the senior Duke-commit takes the mound, CB East pitches a legitimate blue-chip prospect. The 6-foot-4 Weaver had a 1.55 ERA with 54 Ks in 31.2 innings last season.
“Aidan came to us as a freshman in 2019. He was a tall, lanky kid who threw the ball about 78 to 82. He has just worked,” emphasized CB East head coach Kyle Dennis. “He has gained 12 or 14 miles an hour since his freshman year. He has worked his tail off.”
Quakertown (20-6) played an extremely successful 2021 for a team that started four freshmen. The Panthers tossed eight shutouts and yielded just one run in five other games.
Andrews, a league honorable mention outfielder as a freshman, also hit .423 and drove in 32 runs. “I’ve been playing since I was 5 or 6 years old, and I fell in love with the game,” she remembered. “I love to be competitive. I’m very, all-softball, all-in, all of the time.”
“Syd’s primary position has always been pitcher but when she came into varsity as a freshman, we already had a senior pitcher,” Scott added. “I had Syd start three games her freshman year so she could get a taste. The plan was to have her be the starting varsity pitcher her sophomore year. Of course, we lost that because of COVID.”
“In freshman year, I started in left field so I got that varsity experience,” Andrews added. “Sophomore year was very upsetting because we were going to be a very good team. Almost our whole field were seniors. But it made me think: now I need to push myself even harder because I only have two seasons left instead of those three seasons.”
Andrews made lemonade from lockdown lemons. “My neighbor Maya Hellyer is my catcher,” she described. “We’d go outside in the yard and throw. It kept me in shape. During our quarantine, we also ran a mile or two every single day. We kept ourselves to that.”
“I would always catch a travel game or two to see how she was doing,” Scott said. “She did great the summer before her junior year so we had pretty high expectations for her.”
“In the very beginning of the season, I was getting strikeouts, but not as many as I wanted to,” Andrews admitted. “We had to work more inside on batters and that is what I got into as the season went on. That’s what made my performance in the circle a lot better.”
Last March 30, Andrews nearly outdueled the eventual state player of the year, pitcher Mady Volpe, and the future state champion North Penn Knights in a 1-0 loss.
“When (North Penn) made it all the way through, my team and I knew we were so close to beating the champions of everything,” Andrews recalled. “We lost by one. We thought that next year, we’re going to work harder and push ourselves.”
Andrews held Methacton to a lone run in the district playoff opener, and helped Quakertown clinch a states berth with a 5-2 upset of No. 1 Pennsbury in quarterfinals the next day. Andrews also smacked a three-run homer, to hand the Falcons just their second defeat of the year.
“Pretty much everyone is back,” from a Quakertown team that won a PIAA game last spring. “Coming in so young and making it that far made us so excited for the next year. We’re ready to get back into it,” Andrews said.
Toeing a mound instead of a ring, Weaver proved he could compete with the nation’s best on the national showcase circuit last summer. But his journey from freshman to five-star senior wasn’t guaranteed.
“If you told me in ninth grade that I’d be throwing 96 my senior year, I would not have believed you at all,” Weaver admitted. “Quarantine helped a lot. I lifted every day and gained a lot of weight.
“I was a freshman on varsity and we had a very talented roster with a lot of D-I athletes,” Weaver continued. “I saw how strong they were, and how hard they worked. That motivated me to get to their level and just keep working and working until I got to the number one ace on varsity.
Weaver hit 95 mph at the August Perfect Game (PG) All-American Classic in Petco Park. The prior month, he sat at 91-94 at PG’s National Showcase at Tropicana Field. The All-American Game was a special thrill for Weaver. “I played with the best people in my class in the country,” he said. “You have Elijah Greene and Druw Jones. It was great seeing that level of competition.” Jones, son of five-time All-Star Andruw Jones, and Greene could be the first two high schoolers taken in the July Major League Draft.
“My changeup used to be 70 mph and sidearm so it would be telegraphed easily. As I went on to the next level, that that wouldn’t be able to happen,” Weaver shared, “I tried to tunnel that with my fastball a little more and throw it a little harder so it wouldn’t be picked up as easily by a good hitter. With my slider, I messed around with different grips, arm action and release point until eventually it just clicked.”
Weaver’s role as a starter on the SOL Colonial co-champion Patriot basketball team improved his baseball skills. “Duke loves that I play basketball and am a two-sport athlete,” Weaver noted. “The intensity of basketball has helped me apply that mentality to the mound so I’m locked in 100% of the time for every pitch.”
“You look at him on a basketball court and he is cut,” Dennis noted. “He has grown a couple of inches. He has probably added 30 pounds of pure muscle. He has really worked to get stronger. That has, in my belief, translated into gains into velocity that have been outstanding.
“His biggest asset outside of his athletic ability is his ability to slow the game down,” Dennis feels. “Nothing gets too big for him, no matter if it’s a tight ballgame under the lights against CB West or a scrimmage. He is able to be mentally locked in and completely unflappable.
“I’m not a guy who shows too much emotion,” Weaver agreed. “I don’t get too high or too low because things can change just like that if I get too cocky or down.”
Dennis’ closing comment is something that Scott would likely echo about Andrews. “It’s just fun to watch Aidan Weaver pitch,” Dennis offered. “Just watching him go out and do what he does.”
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