Recap

Looking to claim their first Lancaster-Lebanon League Championship since 2006, the Manheim Township Blue Streaks traveled to Clipper Magazine Stadium on Thursday evening to face the Ephrata Mountaineers in the final L-L game of the season. Ephrata won the pregame toss and elected to serve as the home team in the neutral field contest. Township defeated Ephrata at home earlier this season in a tightly contested 3-1 game. Leading off the top of the 1st, starting pitcher JT Weaver looped a single to shallow right field to get things started for the Blue Streaks, but the next three Township batters were retired and Weaver was left standing on 1st at the end of the first half inning. Five days removed from his complete game gem in the L-L quarterfinals against Manheim Central, Weaver took the mound looking to give the Blue Streaks another quality postseason performance. Two ground outs and a strikeout to the top of Ephrata’s lineup kept this one scoreless through 1. Township and Ephrata both were set down in order in the 2nd before the Blue Streaks broke through in the 3rd. Ty Jenkins dropped a single into left field and advanced to 2nd on a Jack Armstrong SAC bunt. With 2 outs, a Michael Heckman single off the glove of the Ephrata shortstop put the first run on the board, 1-0 MT. Ryan Flury quickly added to the lead with an opposite field 2-run bomb that cleared the head-high fence in deep right-center – Flury’s 7th HR of the season. Still in the 3rd, trailing 3-0, Ephrata picked up their first baserunner on an infield error before Armstrong, Heckman and Fisher Druck turned a 4-6-3 double play to clear the bases. For the third out of the bottom of the 3rd, Gavin Glass dove on a hard ground ball at 3rd and completed a miraculous throw to 1st from his knees. Another scoring opportunity arrived for the Blue Streaks in the top of the 4th after Ben Shenosky picked up a leadoff walk and was replaced on 1st by Tyler Mulholland on an infield fielder’s choice in the next at-bat. Jenkins singled to left to put men on the corners for Armstrong to rope an RBI single down the left field line and make it 4-0 Township. A 5th run arrived in the top of the 5th with Mulholland driving home courtesy runner Cole Stoltzfus from 2nd after Flury and Shenosky walked earlier in the inning. Ephrata broke through in the bottom of the 5th with their first hits of the game coming in a sequence that put a quick 2 spot on the board and pulled the score closer, 5-2. With Mountaineer runners still on base and only 1 out, Weaver, unfazed, collected a fly out to right and a strikeout to preserve the MT lead. Needing to counter the Ephrata attack, the Blue Streaks brought out the bunt team to start the 6th. Armstrong, Weaver, and Heckman all successfully reached base on bunts to the left side and picked up a few extra bases thanks to a pair of fielding errors on the Mounts. Armstrong scored on Weaver’s bunt while Weaver crossed home plate on a Flury double across the 3rd base bag. Still with no outs, the two runs made it 7-2 MT and the Blue Streaks were still threatening. Druck walked to load the bases and Shenosky and Mulholland each looped a single to the outfield to rotate the runners on the bases. A SAC fly to deep center for Ryan Brader and SAC fly to left for Jenkins put Township in double digits, and the Blue Streaks never looked back. 11-2 MT. A fast strikeout/fly out/strikeout bottom of the 6th from Weaver sent the Championship game to the final inning where Weaver returned to the mound to try and finish off another postseason complete game. A leadoff single gave the Ephrata squad hope, but the deficit was too large to overcome and Weaver’s 7th and 8th strikeouts along with a game-ending pop out to Heckman at shortstop clinched the chip for the Blue Streaks. 11-2 Final. Weaver, with the W, finished with 7 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 8 K.