Photo by Kathy Reed

By Dom Reed

MILROY – The 4-1 Mifflin County Huskies welcomed in the 3-4 State College Little Lions for a PIAA matchup in a game that featured cross-mountain rivals on Senior Night.

Mifflin County handed the ball to star hurler Grady Hoppel. He would be tasked at trying to shut down a star studded power line of the Little Lions.   Hoppel would pitch well going 5.2 innings striking out four walking just one batter.

State College was led by Derek Moriata with two knocks on the night one being a no doubt home run off senior Aidan Attivo.

“You know i was seeing the ball tonight I can’t thank the defense enough,” said Moriata. I love our guys. We just put the bat to the ball tonight. We just hit the ball hard the whole game and it just happened. I wasn’t looking up for a single. I was looking for something more than a single.”

The Little LIons had productive bats up and down the lineup even the guys off the bench came through in State College 6-1 win over Mifflin County. Cody Norman would rip a ball down the line for a two run single in the top of the seventh. State College also got hits from Sabastian Rhoades,Jake Hall and Jack Coleman in the teams’ late surge for the win.

“You know what like I said to the boys we’re just playing, stand the course to try to get ready for May because at the end of the day its a three team playoff with MIfflin County and Altoona,” State College Coach Dave Williams said. “They are two great opponents. You know the district is strong and that’s what were preparing for so you know. I thought Jude pitched really really well.  Like I said to everybody, it took everybody on our team to win this game. The boys that came off the bench, the guys that started all the pitches and i loved how they didn’t quit. They played well. We always talk about playing 21 outs and you know starting out we were down 1-0 and it stayed there for a while.

“ It’s easy to think that the games going to not go in our favor but we played hard and we come out on top. I couldn’t be more proud.”

State College also got strong pitching from Jude Scavone going four innings allowing two hits while walking two batters. Rowan Walker came in relief giving his staff three strong innings of work.

Mifflin County could only muster out three hits in the loss. Evan Strohecker,Jayden Smith and  Madden Weaver all collected a hit. Mifflin County also had three errors tonight one in the outfield the other pair came in the infield.

“We have a lot of games to play but we have to find some offense. I thought Grady pitched really really well tonight against a really good hitting team and he had them off balance for the majority of the night,” said Mifflin County coach Ray Hoppel. “He was starting to elevate some pitches in the top of the sixth and so we decided to make the change in the middle of their order and unfortunately that backfired alittle bit. But what it comes down to is we have to swing the bat better. I mean we’re not scoring many runs and were making things very difficult on our pitchers to try to you know keep us in low scoring games all the time. You know sometimes there’s going to be games where you know you are going to give up some runs and we have to be able to have the run support to come back out and answer and we just haven’t so far this year. But you know we’ll get  at it tomorrow and have a good practice and hopefully things will be different for us on Wednesday.”

Mifflin County will have a much needed day off tomorrow before they play Wednesday at the Mifflin County Middle School before making the trip to Peoples Natural Gas Field for a tournament.

State College will welcome in Chambersburg Wednesday the Little Lions will close the weekend out against  Bellefonte at Medlar Field on Friday.