Saint Joseph’s Catholic baseball falls to Williamsburg in District 6 Class 1A semifinal
Saint Joseph’s Catholic found themselves down 4-0 to Williamsburg in the bottom of the fifth with its season on the line in the District 6 Class 1A semifinals.
The Wolfpack scored five runs on a sacrifice fly by Spencer Gigante, a single by Chris Forstmeier, a single by Thomas Delahoy and a groundout by Luke Duckworth. Still, Saint Joe’s came up short, losing 6-5 in eight innings of play.
Jason Dreibelbis went 2-for-4 with a walk and two strikeouts and Evan Roach went 2-for-3 with a walk to lead the Wolfpack in hits.
Roach started the game for Saint Joe’s. Roach allowed two runs (none earned) on two hits over three innings, striking out five. Duckworth pitched five innings in relief out of the bullpen, allowing four runs, two strikeouts and one walk.
Head coach Ryan Hendrick saw his team come a long way since its 3-5 start to the season. The Wolfpack went on to win eight consecutive games, prior to their Tuesday matchup with Williamsburg.
“From the beginning of the season until now, we’re a completely different team and it starts with our senior leadership,” Hendrick said. “They stepped up multiple times and they’re tough. We truly thought we were the best team in the states, it’s just that baseball is a crazy sport and we had a rough game today, but our senior leadership is going to be missed greatly by everyone in this program.”
Delahoy, watching the sunset of his high school career dawn on State College’s Teener League field on Tuesday, spoke to the younger members of his team in the post game huddle. The senior catcher fought long and hard to watch the program build from his freshman season with a District 6 Class 1A championship season.
“It’s just an honor to play with everybody this year,’ Delahoy said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better team to play my senior season with. I couldn’t have asked for a better game to have gone out on. It was an eight-inning game, we fought hard and everything we left out there, all I have is gratefulness.”
Delahoy, Roach, Dmitri Cornall, Nick Coskren and Chris Forstmeier were all a part of the senior leadership that Hendrick looked to guide his team.
“When you have players like Thomas Delahoy, Evan Roach and all of our senior leaders — you’re never out of a game,” Hendrick said. “As a coach, that’s what you want. You have a leader that knows, even in a game like this, that we have a mentality that we’re going to win every game. It’s huge. You can’t make up for that — we’re losing six seniors, but we’ll be back next year.”
Williamsburg is set to take on Bishop McCourt in the District 6 Class 1A championship game at People’s Natural Gas Field in Altoona.
This story was originally published May 24, 2022 at 10:41 PM.
