Quarryville captures fourth straight Quad County Baseball League title

    Quarryville gave new meaning to the word “quad” in Quad County Baseball League.
    The Ville captured its fourth straight championship by finishing off a three-game sweep of the Royals with a 3-2 triumph in eight innings Friday night, August 11.

    Matt Rayha’s sacrifice fly to right plated Connor Blantz with the title-clinching run as Quarryville recorded its second consecutive championship series walk-off win.
    A talented mix of wily veterans and gifted younger players propelled The Ville. It was a recipe “four” success.
    “I’ve been playing in this league for nearly 15 years and they’re all fun. They’re all special,” Rayha said. “This one especially, because we had a lot of turnover this year. A few of us, Ben (Miller), and Zack (Leonard), and Joe (Murray), and Tanner (Kennedy) have been around for a while. We have a lot of guys who just graduated from high school or have finished a year or two of college. There’s a big age gap this year and it was fun to see us show up at playoff time. But they’re all special.”
    This one was the most improbable. Quarryville endured a seemingly season-long hitting slump, batting .220 as a team and finishing the schedule with a 8-8 record, six games behind the first-place Royals (14-2).
    “We were pretty down,” said Miller, a 2008 Solanco graduate. “You could easily see we weren’t having fun. You try to come out here with the mindset to have fun, but when you get two or three hits a game for seven or eight games in a row, you do get pretty down. You’ve got to come out every night and focus. When we have fun you can see how much better we play. As frustrating as it can get, every day you come out and get after it.”
    The Ville dropped the semifinal series opener against Memory 21 and in game two were inches away from being eliminated before the shortstop Miller snagged a low liner and turned a transformational double play.
    Quarryville co-coaches Tanner Kennedy and Zack Leonard, who this year took over for Brian Tercha, were wondering if their team would snap out of its slump in time for the postseason.
    “We were certainly concerned,” Kennedy said. “We thought [the Royals] had it. They only had two losses in the regular season. We struggled in the semifinals series. We were about four inches away from losing. Game of inches.”
    Added Leonard: "I was very worried. I did not expect us to win this championship. Going into the playoffs we were getting two to four hits a game. It was a struggle to produce offense and we didn’t really know how to change it. Baseball is a funny game where it only takes one game to switch your season. That’s what happened. We had that game against Memory 21. We somehow came out with a win and that just changed the trajectory of our season.”
    Miller was also distressed. “I’ll be honest, I was a little nervous coming into the playoffs.,” he said. “Even the first two games of the playoffs we didn’t do very well. For whatever reason, you get one or two hits in a good spot and you get an early lead and the momentum picks up and it just keeps going.”
    While the bats finally started flourishing in the decisive game against Memory 21, Quarryville's pitching dominated throughout the playoffs. Ville hurlers allowed a total of 13 runs in six postseason games, only five of them earned.     Starters Hunter Sipel, Kyle Stively, and Hayden Fox yielded one earned run in the championship series.
    Sipel received the call in game three and got better as the game went along, yielding six hits and two walks while recording six strikeouts in the eight-inning complete game. The Penn Manor graduate who will be a redshirt freshman at Kent State threw 120 pitches in the eight-inning complete game.
    “I told them not to tell me,” Sipel said. “I was going the whole game. No matter what.”
    Prior to the clincher, Sipel had not worked more than five innings all summer. “I had to really find the next gear after the sixth,” he said.
    The Royals' leadoff man reached safely in each of the first four innings before Sipel found his rhythm.
    “I just kind of slowed myself down, kind of mentally reset,” he said. “My mechanics were there. I just mentally had to slow down. My heartbeat was getting up.”
    Sipel's breaking ball kept the Royals off-balance. “After the fourth inning it started to spin really well and that helped,” said Sipel.
    He was also part of last season's title team. “It means a lot,” Sipel said. “I’m always at college playing. Coming back home to play really means a lot. Nothing beats playing at home.”
    After not holding a lead at any point in the first two games, the Royals got on the board first in game three with a run in the second. Quarryville got an out at the plate and catcher Garrett Worthington threw a runner out at second attempting to steal, but the Royals scored on a two-out throwing error. Another Ville error led to a run in the third.
    Quarryville tied it in the home half of the third. With two outs, Miller hit the ball up the middle. It caromed off the pitcher's glove and rolled to shortstop and Miller beat the throw to first. Tyler Burger followed with a two-run blast over the left field fence.
    “I couldn’t even feel it hit off the bat,” said Burger. “It went and halfway down the line I just thought, ‘Wow, that thing went a ways.’ I was pumped up in the moment. I’ve never hit a wood bat home run before. The first one with a wood bat was one to remember in a championship game.”
    Burger sustained a hip injury late in game one and did not play in the field the rest of the series, but his bat made life easier for him in game three.
    “I didn’t have to run hard,” Burger said. “I jogged into second when I hit the double and got to jog around the bases [after the home run], which was awesome.”
    Frustrated following the semifinal series game one defeat, the 2023 Solanco graduate went back to the lab. “I was hitting the batting cage every night,” said Burger, who will attend Lebanon Valley College this fall. “We have a cage at our house. I was just hammering the fundamentals, trying to hit the ball to the opposite field, and it just clicked in the last game against Memory 21 when I hit those triples and it just kept going from their. It’s been a hot streak and I feel really good in the box and I’m seeing the ball very well.”
    Burger, whose dad, Rob, is a league alumnus, was thrilled to win a title in his first season. “It’s awesome,” he said. “It means a lot. They took us in this year and it’s my first year playing with them. They really taught me a lot and to be able to play baseball loose and have fun again.”
    Burger said his teammates helped the way he approaches the game. "They helped me realize I can be a better player than I am,” Burger said. “Pushed me to my limit and kept my head up when I was down a little bit. They believed in me all the way and we’re champs.”
    After Burger's game-tying bomb, Sipel retired eight of the next 10 batters he face, erasing one of the baserunners on a pickoff. Quarryville stranded the go-ahead run on third in the bottom of the sixth.
    Quarryville backed Sipel with several outstanding defensive plays over the final two innings. Third baseman Gio Malatesta fielded a leadoff grounder over the bag in the seventh and made the long toss across for an out.  After a walk and single, Sipel initially misplayed a comebacker, but was able to get an out at first. With two outs and runners on second and third, the next batter hit a little popup between first and second. The Ville second baseman Rayha charged, scooped the ball on a short-hop, and fired to first. First baseman Tag Hess lunged to make the catch and managed to maintain contact with the bag as he fell to the dirt.
    “Hunter does such a great job on the mound,” Rayha said. “All of our pitchers have and they trust us to make plays for them. Whether it was me or Ben or Gio (Malatesta), I think all of us would’ve made the play. It came my way and I tried to be aggressive and not let the ball play you. I was fortunate I was able to make a couple plays for us…The way he hit it it was spinning off the bat .It was going to short-hop and spin real wild. I didn’t think I was going to catch it so I just went all out and tried to get it on a good short-hop. It’s probably a 50-50 play and I was really fortunate in that spot I was able to make it for Hunter and for the rest of the guys.”
    Quarryville did not score in the bottom of the seventh.
    The Quad County league this season adopted the same extra-inning rule as Major League Baseball so each half-inning begins with a runner on second. The first batter bunted the ball in the air in front of the mound and Sipel made a sprawling grab. After a strikeout, the runner moved to third on a wild pitch and the next batter was hit by a pitch to put runners on the corners. Rayha smothered a grounder to the right side by the next batter and flipped to Miller for the force at second.
    In a league predominantly comprised of college-age men, 33-year-olds Rayha and Miller form The Ville’s double play combination and hit 1-2 in the order.
    “Ben and I take a lot of pride in it,” said Rayha, a 2008 Penn Manor grad. “When you step in between the lines you better be able to get the job done. And we feel like we’ll keep playing until we can’t do that anymore.”
    Blantz began the bottom of the eighth on second and moved up when Malatesta’s bunt was mishandled. Malatesta stole second without a throw with Rayha at the plate. Rayha hit a fly ball to medium deep right and Blantz scored easily to clinch the championship.
    What makes Quarryville so successful? “I’ve questioned that a lot over the years,” Miller said. “I don’t really know what it is. This year we have a bit of a younger team, but not many teams have four guys in their 30s. We click as a group. I can’t speak for other teams but we seem to jell.”
    Said Sipel. “I think we form more of a family than other teams. We’re not just a bunch of summer team guys coming together just to have fun. This is what we do every year. We have older guys who keep coming back. We don’t have guys leave very often.”
    Leonard, who started the decisive game three against Memory 21, is in his 10th season in the league. “I guess it’s the continued success, year in and year out, expecting to win, then putting that into play no matter who we’re bringing in,” he said. “A lot of new guys coming in this year. We faced a lot of adversity this year. We were not doing as well as we expected. To come out and play with the grit we did really just shows our potential and we deserved to win.”
    Leonard and Kennedy seek counsel from the other experienced Ville players such as Miller and Rayha. “It’s not a democracy, but it’s an oligarchy,” said Kennedy. “We’re always communicating. We have a group text chat always making sure we’re making the right moves and we’re always on the same page. Me and Matty coached together at Hempfield so we’re always on the same wavelength.”
    Since the Lancaster-Lebanon Twilight League became the Quad County Baseball League in 2000, no team had won more than two straight titles.     “It just shows that we’re a dynasty,” said Kennedy. “This is what we’re here for. If you believe in the clutch gene and being able to do it when the lights are shining on you. It’s just something we always do.”
    Quarryville's six championships are tied with Smitty's Cardinals for the most in Quad County League history. Quarryville first fielded a team in 2009 and claimed its first crown in 2013.
    “At the end of the day, every time we come out here we have fun,” Miller said. “We like to play, get after it, and if we win, we win, and if it doesn’t work out, it is what it is. But we’ve been fortunate the last couple years to get hot at the right time and that’s what it’s all about in baseball. Every single championship is very special. This year we had a new group of guys. They came in and connected with us right away and they really fit in. The older guys, we take them under our wings. Their talent shows. It’s really special.”


CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES
GAME 2
Quarryville 8, Royals 1
    Kyle Stively came within one out of a no-hitter as The Ville went up two games to none in the championship series Thursday, August 9.
    The 2021 Solanco High grad fanned nine in 6 2/3 innings while issuing two walks and hitting two batters. The Royals ended his no-hit bid on a two-out RBI single in the bottom of the seventh. Tim King came on in relief and recorded a strikeout to end the game.
    Quarryville took advantage of five walks to score three runs in the top of the first on just one hit. Matt Rayha led off with a walk and Ben Miller followed with a double over the right fielder's head. Tyler Burger walked to load the bases.
    After a strikeout, Hunter Sipel drew a walk to force in the first run. With two outs, Garrett Worthington fell behind in the court but eventually worked a walk to make it 2-0. Lane Weismiller drew an RBI walk.
    The Ville tallied twice in the third. Gio Malatesta was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded and another run scored on a passed ball.
    Sipel doubled in the fourth and scored on a Worthington single for a 6-0 advantage. Tag Hess belted a solo homer to right in the sixth And Worthington doubled off the bottom of the left field fence to plate Joe Murray, who had singled.


CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES
GAME 1
Quarryville 13, Royals 4
    The Ville struck first with a lopsided victory in the championship series opener Wednesday night, August 9.
    Hayden Fox tossed a complete game for Quarryville, allowing only four unearned runs in the sixth after his teammates had provided him with a 13-0 cushion.
    Quarryville jumped on top with four runs in the top of the second. Hunter Sipel struck out but reached on a passed ball and advanced to second on Joe Murray's sac bunt. Garrett Worthington delivered a double to center to put The Ville on the board. With two outs, Connor Blantz sliced an RBI triple in the right field corner. Gio Malatesta walked and Ben Miller supplied a two-run double to the warning track in left.
    The Royals threatened in the fourth. With two outs and the bases loaded, a Fox pitch got past the catcher Worthington and the runner on third raced for home. Worthington recovered quickly and threw to Fox for an out at the plate.
    Momentum on its side, Quarryville erupted for five runs in the fifth. Sipel supplied an RBI hit, Lane Weismiller drew a bases loaded walk, Blantz knocked in a run on a fielder's choice, and two runs scored on an error.
    The Ville tacked on four more in the sixth. Burger got things started with a triple to right-center. Weismiller had another RBI walk, Blantz drove in a run with a bloop base-hit and Malatesta plated a run with a groundout.


SEMIFINALS GAME 3
Quarryville 12, Memory 21 2
(6 innings)
    The Ville won the decisive game three in the semifinal round in convincing fashion.
    Tyler Burger was 3 for 3 with two triples and four RBIs to lead Quarryville.
    The Ville took the lead by tallying twice in the first without benefit of a hit. Ben Miller and Burger walked and Tag Hess was hit by a pitch. After two strikeouts, Connor Blantz hit a grounder to short. The shortstop tried to flip to second for a force but threw wildly, allowing two runs to score.
    After Memory 21 scored a run in the top of the second, Quarryville responded with four more. Miller had a bloop RBI. Burger belted an RBI triple to left and scored on an error and Joe Murray delivered an RBI single.
    The Ville broke it wide open with five runs in the third. Gio Malatesta and Garrett Worthington both singled through the hole. Miller walked and Burger blasted a three-run triple over the left fielder's head. Burger scored on Hunter Sipel's sacrifice fly and Blantz ripped an RBI single to left.
    Ahead 11-2, Quarryville ended the game in the sixth. Lane Weismiller doubled to left, moved to third on an error, and scored on a sac fly by Miller. Starter Zack Leonard allowed two runs (one earned) in 3 2/3 innings. Tim King entered with the bases loaded and ended the fourth with a strikeout. Gehrig Harsh recorded two strikeouts in a scoreless sixth.