The last two times Shaler won a WPIAL baseball championship, coach Brian Junker was given the old Gatorade shower by his players afterward.
But considering that rain fell steadily throughout his team’s latest trip to the final Tuesday, no shower was needed this time.
Fueled by the pitching of starter Colby Weber and wildness by the Pine-Richland bullpen in the final inning, No. 3 Shaler withstood the rain and extra innings to topple the top-seeded Rams, 5-2, in eight innings in the WPIAL Class 5A title game at EQT Park.
With the win, Shaler (17-6) claimed its third title in seven years (the Titans also won them in 2019 and 2023) and became just the fourth school to win seven titles, joining North Allegheny (9), Allegheny (7) and McKeesport (7). Pine-Richland (20-4) was also trying to win its seventh title all time. The Rams last did it in 2019.
“It feels awesome,” Weber said. “We’ve been working all year for this. To finally get it done, it feels like a dream come true. It’s crazy.”
In what was the rubber match between the teams that split the Section 3 title, the pitching matchup between Weber and Pine-Richland’s Keegan Deihl was an outstanding one. Both senior right-handers, Weber is an East Carolina recruit and Deihl is headed to Baylor.
Weber was the better of the two Tuesday, giving up just one run, two hits and three walks while striking out 13 in six innings. Meanwhile, Deihl surrendered two runs, three hits and three walks to go along with seven strikeouts in 7⅓ innings.
Shaler struck for two runs off of Deihl in the fourth inning when Colby McGuire hit an RBI single before scoring on a wild pitch. Pine-Richland then tagged Weber for a run courtesy of Tanner Cunningham’s sacrifice fly in the fourth.
Shaler took that 2-1 lead into the bottom of the seventh, but what they didn’t bring with them was Weber, who reached the 105-pitch limit while facing his final batter of the sixth. After drawing two walks against reliever Dante DeLeonibus, Pine-Richland found itself with two runners on and two outs in its last at-bat. Logan Plummer then walked, much to the dismay of the Shaler faithful who insisted he took strike three, loading the bases. Sam Heckert then legged out an infield single to short that brought in Cunningham with the tying run.
“We thought we had him in with a curveball down the middle to end the game, and [the umpire] said it was in the dirt,” Junker said. “We all saw that it wasn’t in the dirt. What are you gonna do, though? You can’t get every call right. And just like I told the guys, ‘We’re gonna have adversity in this game. It’s how you react to it.’ And they went into the dugout and said, ‘We’re gonna go win this.’ And that’s what we did, and it feels good.”
Just as was the case with Weber to end the sixth, Deihl reached the pitch limit after striking out Joe Rispoli to start off the eighth inning. Pine-Richland would go on to use three more pitchers in the inning, and all of them struggled to throw strikes.
“We were thinking attack,” Weber said. “We knew that we were down in momentum, but we could easily get it back up.”
After Ben Yeckel hit a one-out single, Max Saban and Landon Schiffhauer walked to load the bases. That brought up Troy Leas, who has been plunked by more pitches than any other Shaler player this season. This time, Leas took one on the left hand on a pitch from Cunningham, which scored pinch-runner Brady Thompson and gave Shaler a 3-2 lead.
“I was trying to see a curveball,” Leas said. “Yesterday in practice I was hitting the curveball pretty well, and then one ran in and hit me right in the hand.”
Leas certainly didn’t mind.
“I like getting hit by pitches,” he said. “It’s one of my favorite things.”
Later in the inning, Brendan Fitzgerald walked with the bases juiced to bring in another run and Schiffhauer scored on a wild pitch to extend the Shaler lead to 5-2.
“It’s frustrating,” Pine-Richland coach Kurt Wolfe said. “I thought we did a nice job against Weber and I thought we prepared well for him, and then the rains came hard. And we just couldn’t throw strikes. They end up scoring three runs without a hit, and that was tough.
Pine-Richland, though, still got one last chance against Shaler’s bullpen. However, DeLeonibus worked around a walk and hit batsman to close things out in the bottom of the eighth, striking out Thomas Kapanowski swinging to end the game.
The last time Shaler won a WPIAL title, it also won a PIAA title, a goal the Titans will begin working towards when the state tournament gets started Monday.
But on this night, celebrating another WPIAL title was the No. 1 goal.
“Two times in three years,” Leas said. “This is pretty awesome.”
Brad is a sports writer at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at [email protected].