‘Little mistakes’ cost Dock Mennonite against Delone Catholic in PIAA-2A opener

CHESTER >> Dock Mennonite Academy’s season came to an end in the first round of the PIAA-2A state playoffs.

The Bicentennial Athletic League and District 1-2A champions lost to Delone Catholic, 9-3, at Widener University Monday afternoon.

The Pioneers hung tough for six innings, trimming their deficit to one, 4-3, in the bottom of the sixth, but Delone Catholic scored five runs in the top of the seventh to widen the margin before closing out the game in the bottom of the frame.

Five of the Squires’ first six batters in the seventh inning reached base – three walks, a hit batter and a single – and all scored to extend a 4-3 lead to 9-3. 

The free passes coming back to bite Dock was a problem all game. They issued 10 walks and a hit batter in the game. Seven of the walks scored runs plus the hit batter.

Offensively, Dock out-hit Delone Catholic, 12-8, but got caught trying to take extra bases.

In the first inning, the Pioneers had runners on first and third with one out. They attempted to get caught in a rundown stealing second to score the run, but Delone Catholic got both Nate Lapp and Sam Laux out to end the threat.

“Some of the mistakes we made we usually don’t make,” Lapp said. “In games like this, you just can’t make those little mistakes that affect the whole game. That’s what it all came down to – the little mistakes.”

In the fourth inning, Deven Ross hit a leadoff double, but got thrown out at third trying to extend it into a triple.

“We’ve been aggressive all year,” Dock coach Joe Mascio said. “We weren’t going to stop today. That’s how we play and like I told the guys, sometimes we look great at it and other times we look bad. I told them to keep being aggressive because that’s how they want to play and that’s how we’ve been playing.”

Dock fell behind 1-0 in the top of the first when Delone Catholic’s Brodie Collins hit an RBI triple, but responded with two runs in the bottom of the third to take a 2-1 lead. Logan Hinnershitz tied the game with a sacrifice fly and Laux put Dock ahead with an RBI single.

Delone Catholic responded with three runs in the top of the fourth to take a 4-2 lead. With four walks and two singles in the inning, the Squires scored on a balk, a wild pitch and an Aidan Wittmer single. The inning ended with Dock’s Zack Frederick catching a fly ball and throwing a runner out at home for a double play.

“He was squeezing me a little bit and on top of that I was getting tired,” Lapp, who started on the mound, said. “My arm started to slow down a little bit, forcing me to throw more balls.”

Ross scored Frederick with a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the sixth to make it 4-3 and Dock had the top of its order due up in the bottom of the seventh, but Delone Catholic’s five-run top of the seventh gave the Squires all of the momentum.

“It’s hard to have 12 hits and only three runs,” Mascio said, “especially since they only had eight (hits), but they took advantage of every opportunity. They walked when they had to, they had a couple calls that went their way and every time we had a little bit of momentum, they seemed to find a way to punch in a couple runs. They had a bunch of crooked numbers for innings for runs – three in the fourth and five in the seventh. That’s it right there. We were pretty consistent hitting the ball but we just couldn’t get the stop there and comeback.”

Lapp started for Dock and took the loss. In five innings he struck out three batters to seven walks. He allowed four runs on five hits.

Frederick came on in relief and allowed five runs on three hits in two innings. He struck out two batters to three walks.

Despite the season ending in the first round of states, Dock accomplished a lot in 2022.

“We had a great year,” Lapp said. “We went, I think it was 16-4, and we’ll take that. I think we had a really good year. Obviously it sucks that we didn’t win, but it is what it is. I think we had a really good year.”

“I think it was a really good year,” Mascio agreed. “I think we competed all the time. We got a late start to the season with guys playing basketball still, so it took us a little while to find our groove, but we’ve played fairly well for a good part of the year. We played well right up until the end today. I’m just proud of the way that the guys competed all the way up until that last inning.”

Delone Catholic 9, Dock Mennonite 3

Delone Catholic 100 300 5 – 9

Dock Mennonite 002 001 0 – 3

WP: Jake Sherdel 7 IP 6 K 0 BB 12 H 3 R

LP: Nate Lapp 5 IP 3 K 7 BB 5 H 4 R

2B: DC: Brodie Collins. DM: Deven Ross.

3B: DC: Brodie Collins.