May 22, 2018 5 min read

WEXFORD – With the potential go-ahead run at third base and one out in the fifth inning Tuesday afternoon, Canon-McMillan High School baseball player Connor Flaherty harmlessly popped out to the second baseman on the sixth pitch of his at-bat.

Flaherty, the No. 8 hitter in the Big Macs’ lineup, was chomping at the bit to get another opportunity with runners in scoring position.

A pair of infield singles from Nick Serafino and Brandan Rea, along with an intentional walk to Zach Rohaley, in the bottom of the seventh inning gave Flaherty that chance.

With the bases loaded and one out, Flaherty pounded a 3-1 pitch into the ground and up the middle as Serafino raced home from third base to score the game-winning run as Canon-McMillan defeated Plum, 2-1, in a WPIAL Class 6A quarterfinal game at North Allegheny High School.

“All season, I’ve been trying to keep the same approach – do my job and look for a fastball to hit,” Flaherty said. “He got me in a 3-1 count, and I did my job.”

The walkoff victory advances Canon-McMillan to a semifinal game against Central Catholic, which defeated Butler 6-0 on Marshall McGraw’s no-hitter, at 4 p.m. today at Boyce Mayview Park. The Big Macs have lost in the semifinals each of the last two seasons.

“Our leaders have taken over this team,” said C-M coach Tim Bruzdewicz. “We challenged them to take over this team about the middle of the way through the section season. (Zach) Rohaley, (Ian) Hess and Serafino have really stepped it up. The bottom line is, they pick up everybody else and they are doing that.”

Each played a role in keeping the game tied. Serafino tracked down a fly ball to deep centerfield to end a 1-2-3 fifth inning and Hess stabbed a line drive at first base on a ball that was seemed destined to roll into the right-field corner for extra bases to leadoff the seventh.

But similar to the Big Macs’ first-round win over Norwin, Rohaley kept typically fast-starting Plum in check. The Mustangs took a 1-0 lead in the first inning on an infield single from Evan Sante but struck out two batters with the bases loaded to end the inning.

In the first three innings, Plum stranded seven runners.

“Some of our guys who normally seem to have more success in those RBI situations just didn’t get it done today,” said Plum coach Carl Vollmer, a Waynesburg native.

“We are a team that starts fast, so coming out of that first inning with only one run is hard to swallow. You can’t say anything or get down because you have six innings in front of you. It was a really good scoring opportunity and we didn’t take advantage. We just didn’t get the big hit.”

After five hits in the first three innings, Rohaley held Plum hitless for the remainder of the game. He retired the Mustangs in order in three of the last four innings with the only blemish being a sixth-inning walk.

“The biggest thing was the trust that I have in him,” Bruzdewicz said about Rohaley. “Early on, I called most of the pitches and he’s allowed to shake me off. He came in after the first inning and said, ‘Coach, we need to do something different. We need to start throwing backwards with curveballs and sliders early on and then finish with fastballs. After that he was on his own, cruise control, throwing his own game with his four pitches anywhere in the count.”

After a 28-pitch first inning, Rohaley worked efficiently to finish a complete-game victory, striking out seven.

His counterpart, Plum’s ace starter Ryan Kircher, exited the game with one out in the third inning after immediately clutching his left side after a pitch. Gino Marra relieved Kircher to 3 2/3 scoreless innings until the seventh.

The biggest hit up until Flaherty’s game-winning single was when Hess fouled off a handful of pitches before lining a double into left field to score Cam Walker and tie the score at 1-1 in the bottom of the first inning. It was the only extra-base hit for the Big Macs, whose four infield singles represented half of their hits.

Other than Brandon Rea’s 3-for-3 day, nobody for the Big Macs had a multi-hit game. Canon-McMillan has overcome it’s late-season offensive inefficiencies by winning with pitching and defense. In five of their last six games, the Big Macs have failed to score more than four runs.

“We have been resolute to the fact that we aren’t the team from Florida (that started the season),” Bruzdewicz said. “We aren’t the team that has 15 hits every game. We aren’t sure why, but we are going to try to win 2-1 or 10-9. It’s a game-to-game situation because I can’t get a bead on this team. Sometimes you have to stay out of great players’ way and don’t over-coach it. I think that’s really the key with this team. We eked this one out.”

A final opportunity to make a WPIAL Championship isn’t lost on a Big Macs group that nearly returned nearly intact from a season ago.

“Losing the past couple of years, and basically having the same exact team, we know the feeling,” Rohaley said. “Nobody wants to feel that again. We understand what we need to do to get this done.”