LOCAL SPORTS: Kittanning 9/10 All-Stars Fall One Game Shy of Championship

by Jake DeLuca
The Kittanning 9/10 year old All-Star team fell to Homer City in what turned out to be the last game of their season.

Kittanning had a chance to go to the Tournament of Champions championship game to face Indiana, the team that beat them in the All-Star championship.

Unfortunately for Kittanning, Homer City came to play.

Homer City was able to jump out to a 6-0 lead in the first, and Kittanning couldn’t bounce back after that. Homer City’s pitcher was throwing a lot of off-speed pitches, which Kittanning manager Tom Scheeren attributes to their slow start.

“Their pitcher was slower than what we are used to, he was dealing a lot of nasty sliders and cutters and we just couldn’t hit him. We had a slow start and sometimes that happens,” Scheeren said.

After Homer City’s big first inning, things were quiet for a while. Homer City would go the next five inning to score five more runs, and by the time the bottom of the sixth inning rolled around, Homer City had an 11-4 lead over Kittanning.

The bottom of the sixth inning would prove to be possibly the most exciting inning of baseball either team has played in this tournament.

Logan Badac was first up to bat, and he got the inning started off right with a big double. A couple of players were hit by pitches, and Kaiden Scheeren hit a double to score run, leaving players at second and third base. Next up to bat was Jack Valasek, and after struggling behind the plate recently he rebounded in the biggest way possible, with a 3 RBI home-run to make the score 11-9.
Unfortunately for Kittanning, that is where their rally ended as the next two batters up struck out. Tom Scheeren was still proud of his team’s ability to battle back and nearly pull off the comeback.

“We didn’t give up; this team didn’t give up, ever. We almost came through with it, but we let up too many runs in the beginning and we couldn’t make up enough,” Scheeren said.

Scheeren went on to explain his favorite part of coaching this all-star team.

“I love the kids, everyone has a different personality and it’s really fun. It’s tough to lose, no one ever wants to lose, but when we did lose these kids took it very graciously. They understand if you lose you still have to show sportsmanship, and I loved the sportsmanship these boys showed in a loss. You never want to lose, but to be gracious is great,” Scheeren said after the game.

This was the last game of baseball some of these kids will play until next year. For others, they will be right back at it when fall baseball starts.