Storm comes before the rain as North Penn tops Abington in District 1-6A second round

ABINGTON >> Mike Lennon had never won a game while sitting on a bus prior to Wednesday.

The North Penn left-handed pitcher was crammed in the cozy confines of bus No. 28 with the rest of his teammates as they waited out a sudden and strong wall of rain that had paused their District 1-6A second round playoff game at Abington midway through the seventh inning. Despite the best efforts of Abington’s coaching staff to salvage the field, conditions and accumulating lightning delays prompted the game to be called as it stood after six innings.

That brought a pretty hearty response from inside the bus as No. 9 North Penn secured its 6-1 win over No. 8 Abington and a spot in Thursday’s quarterfinals.

“We’ve never celebrated on a bus before,” Lennon said. “But that definitely made it fun.”

Before the rain, North Penn stormed ahead with six unanswered runs and would have finished with more had the score not reset.

“We tried to stay mentally ready, the attitude was pretty upbeat and when we got word it was over, we went crazy,” first baseman RJ Agriss added.

In an effort North Penn coach Kevin Manero called “workmanlike,” Lennon was solid and effective in going all six innings as he got the ball for the Knights playoff opener after a first round bye. The senior allowed just five hits and struck out five while giving up just one run.

That run did give Abington a lead however when the Ghosts took a 1-0 advantage in the bottom of the second. It was an unusual way to score, when senior Ryan Van Buren hit a fly ball to right with runners on the corners. Henry Tyler, the runner at third held up but when the Knights’ throw in went to first, Tyler came in to score.

Abington was making its first postseason appearance since 2015 and just its second since 1988. The Ghosts lose seniors Van Buren, Tyler, Josh Rollins and Jameson Giannatassio but return a strong core off an 11-8 (11-5 SOL Liberty) season.

“To be in a situation where we hosted a playoff game in really our coaching staff’s first year and everybody on varsity’s first year, these guys have nothing to hang their heads about,” Abington coach Bill Degen said. “We told the guys coming back ‘you’re the building blocks,’ this is the cornerstone of what we’re trying to build here.”

North Penn’s slow start offensive was due in large part to Anthony Ehly, Abington’s right-handed starting pitcher. The 6-foot-5 junior, who plays middle infield when not on the mound, worked out of a bases loaded jam in the second and escape the third allowing just one run when North Penn again loaded the bags.

“Anthony is just a competitor, no matter where on the field he is,” Degen said. “He out-works a lot of people.”

Jeff Sabater led off the third and scored when a would-be double play was thwarted by a throw that pulled the first baseman off the bag to get North Penn on the board. The Knights were still searching for a big hit however and would get it an inning later.

Ryan Sullivan, batting out of the No. 9 spot, led off the frame with an infield single to flip the order for Agriss. Sullivan went 3-for-4 on the afternoon as part of a Knights attack that collected 12 official hits and three more in the top half of the seventh that got wiped out due to the game being called.

“We needed to put the bat on the ball and put it in play,” Sullivan, a junior, said. “It was a pretty hard field, so we didn’t want to make mistakes and if you came up with runners on base, do what you needed to in order to drive them in.”

Agriss started his at-bat trying to bunt Sullivan over, but the left fielder negated the need for that by first stealing second base then taking third on a wild pitch. That allowed Agriss to focus on hitting and the senior came through with the breakthrough hit his team needed.

With one swing, Agriss launched a two-run shot to left-center, giving the Knights their first lead at 3-1 and opening the doors for more in the coming innings.

“I think we just needed something to get us going,” Agriss said. “We were there and we know all it’s going to take is one hit. Ry did a great job getting on base and I was ready to bunt and get him over because we have trust in the guy behind us to drive in the runs but it so happened he moved up, I didn’t have to bunt anymore and put a good swing on the ball.”

“You’re welcome,” Sullivan added in wryly.

North Penn tacked on three runs in the fifth inning on four hits, starting with Sam Cohen’s leadoff double and the runs scoring on a Sabater RBI single and a two-run double by Evin Sullivan that got all the way to the base of the fence in center. The Knights added two runs in the top half of the seventh, although they would ultimately be wiped off the books.

Lennon remained unflappable on the mound as the weather turned from sunny and hot to equal parts Dust Bowl and ominous as the skies darkened and wind kicked up a constant cloud of infield dirt.

“I’ve known I’ve been strong the entire year and I’ve been focused,” Lennon said. “With every pitch I throw, I’m trying to put it in the zone and keep my command and the biggest thing in this league is, if you keep the ball low then you can be very effective and get quick outs. My whole mindset was to keep the ball down.”

After five innings of good weather, things changed in a hurry during the sixth. It didn’t seem to faze Cohen, who recorded six straight outs for North Penn defensively, making all three plays at shortstop in the fifth, then getting all three outs when he moved to second base in the sixth as the dirt swirled around him.

Manero felt his team handled the ebbs and flows of the game well, whether it was the batters getting that first big hit and adding on or Lennon and the defense posting shutdown innings to back up the runs. The North Penn coach also credited Abington for not giving up and the Ghosts’ staff for giving a go of saving the field after the weather system rolled through.

“You don’t know what could happen with a two, three, even four run lead so you have to continue to tack on and that’s what you talk about, score first then tack on so it makes it difficult for teams to come back,” Manero said. “We kept at it, put together a tenacious approach at the plate and Mike Lennon was strong, he put the team on his back.”

North Penn’s 14 seniors were looking forward to the postseason, especially after losing all of last year to the pandemic. They’ll be on the road against No. 1 Spring-Ford on Thursday in the quarterfinals, as the game was moved up due to the potential of rain in the forecast all weekend.

“We’ve worked the last nine months for this day right here, it’s one game, win or go home,” Agriss said. “This is all we’ve been working toward so I think it gets everybody going that little bit extra knowing all our hard work came down to this game.”

NORTH PENN 6, ABINGTON 1
NORTH PENN 001 230 – 6 12 1
ABINGTON 010 000 – 1 5 2
HR: NP – RJ Agriss. 2B: NP-Evin Sullivan, Sam Cohen.