Payton Phillips was the difference Friday night for the Mid-East/Cochranton 12 and under softball all-stars as they played a must win game against Titusville in the double-elimination final. A win would force the "if necessary" game Saturday at 11 a.m. in Cochranton. And they won.

Sometimes it is easy to say that one player is the difference, but in this case the math supports it. Phillips scored two of the team's four runs in the 4-2 victory.

She also got an error riddled RBI and on defense scooped up a pair of grounders in the top of the sixth, then threw accoss the diamond for the outs that secured the win.

​She, of course wasn't the only player who did well in the game, but what a game she had.

​Both of these teams are matched evenly and they are very familiar with one another. Many play on the same travel ball team and they faced each other in the first game of the tournament that Titusville won 6-3.

Phillips then alertly scored on a wild pitch.

​Lesko, like Mawhinney didn't get rattled. With a runner on first facing Mawhinney, who is a pretty solid hitter, Lesko was able to snag a liner right back at her and then convert the double play by catching the runner off second base. She then took a grounder and threw the final batter out of the first and getting out of a rough inning only down a run.

Titusville started the second by drawing a walk, but MEC's tiny catcher with a big arm, Reese Stanford gunned down Kylie Crocker trying to steal second. Then Karmyn Reese made a huge play at shortstop fielding Baileigh Greer's shot gunning her down at first.

Lesko seemed to settle in and struck out six batters in a row in the second and third, Then, offensively, in the third she led off with a single just over the outstretched glove of Reese. She reached second but Sanford's arm once again proved mighty when she caught Lesko trying to steal third.

Titusville tied it up in the fourth when Mackenzie Yocum hit a laser to Reese who bobbled it enough for Yocum to reach first. She then stole second and reached third on a fielder's choice on an Octavia Popescu infield grounder.

Yocum then scored on a passed ball.

Then, perhaps the play of the game came when Aundraya Sibble absolutely crushed a ball right at Hadley Frayer at first base. After the ball got by her, Frayer turned to look at the ball headed toward right field and saw that her second baseman Taylor Jordan was backing her up. Frayer made her way to first to get the toss from Jordan to end the inning and put a halt to any additional scoring.

​In the fourth inning, Phillips scored after making the most of reaching first base an a nice base hit. She then made it to third after Reese bunted and, on the fielder's choice, Phillips went to second. Noticing no one was covering third she then dashed  toward the open base and made it.
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She then scored on a wild pitch.

MEC then scored again in the fifth after Irelyn Brenot reached on an error and eventually scored on a Gerow double. Reese relieved Mawhinney and with the help of Phillips who relieved her at shortstop and recorded two of the last three outs. Reese also struck out one.

"We came out today and played to win," said MEC coach Ashleigh Phillips. Her squad is made up of seven players from last years District 1 championship team. That experience played a key role in their finding a way back into the championship game. They lost the opening round game to Titusville last week. They then battled back to reach today's finals. "I am so proud of these girls, because when you go in and lose your first game - it pulls you down. But we have worked hard in practice, I continue to tell them about life lessons, perseverance, just doing the job and just come out here and do your best."

Fun asides. Titusville pitcher Nora Lesko and catcher Kennedy Baker had a request: If they made it to the championships they could get sleeve tattoos. Not permanent ones of course. But they wore them tonight for their game. Coach Randy Baker joked after the game that he might show up with one tomorrow if it would help his team. "You never know, I’ll do whatever it takes."

Also, no idea what this was all about, but it seemed like fun.

Thursday came down to Franklin v. Cranberry in the Little League District 25 championship semi-finals at Miller-Sibley. Cranberry had already beat up on New Bethlehem 18-0 and then beat Oil City 7-4. Franklin had beat one of the best teams in the tournament, Butler 2-1 with a last inning walk off. And handled Clarion easily in their first game.

Going into Thursday's game it was hard to know who would come out on top, both teams seemingly playing on a high level.

​"I was really worried, because they've got some really good sticks on that team," said Franklin coach Ryan Goodman.

It became evident right off the bat that the strategy for Franklin was to swing their own sticks.

Carter Barrett swung at the first pitch of the game drilling it right back to the pitcher. Though it was caught, it was an aggressive swing and a rocket of a hit. "Nothing you can do about that," the Franklin first base coach told Barrett, who looked disappointed walking back towards the dugout. He connected well but the pitcher made a good play.

Holden Goodman then took a cut at the second pitch fouling it off. The third pitch went straight into center-field. Two pitches later Korbyn Sires sent a scorching worm-burner that shaved the dust off the first base bag screaming all the way to the fence and scoring Goodman. Only five pitches in and it was 1-0.

​Cranberry starting pitcher Dylan Gregory struggled with some wild pitches that put Franklin runners into scoring position, but the sound of aluminum cracking was frequent and the pounding of runners kept following.

By the time Cranberry came to the plate they were already down 5-0.

Seemingly un-phased by his rough inning on the mound, Gregory stepped into the batters box ready to redeem himself. His legs proved the better of Franklin's infield as he beat out an infield hit.

Bryce "Boomer" Marchinke lived up to his nickname sending a hard shot right up the middle. Then Clark Findlay doubled to right-center to score Gregory. Then Boomer scored when Kyler Craig's grounder was bobbled allowing him to reach first and Findlay was safely standing on third.
A walk loaded the bases with only one out. John O'Niel then singled to right scoring two. The other John, John Shreve, stepped up and duplicated the right field hit scoring another and tying the game.

Coach Ryan Goodman thought it was a good time to visit the mound, his 5-0 lead erased.

With runners still on second and third, Grayson Sutley got one in play that was bobbled allowing the go ahead run to score. Gregory then batted a second time in the inning and drilled one back to the pitcher who threw to first for the out, but the runner on third scored making it 7-5.

And that was just one inning.

Cranberry's field woes started to come to light in the second, though minimal damage incurred. Hayden Behe popped up, but the ball wasn't handled by the shortstop. Two wild pitches later, a throw to third base ended up in the outfield and Behe scored bringing the score to 7-6.

​But that was the extent of the scoring in the second. for Franklin.

Ryan Goodman decided to change pitchers in the second after Saragian threw 37 pitches in the first. Sires took the mound with a one-run deficit. He threw well except for one pitch to Findlay that traveled further than all the rest. Findlay's solo homerun put Cranberry up by two again  8-6.

The third inning was just weird in many ways.

Ryker Mcaphoose walked. As he stole on the hit and run, Cranberry's Marchinke was headed to cover the base when the ball was ripped through the infield at shortstop. A close call at third piut runners at first and third. Then, as the Franklin runner decided to steal second Cranberry's Kannon Speerstra sent a canon towards second, but no one was covering the base allowing a run to score. Then Franklin loaded the bases with the score 8-7 and another walk tied the game.

It went south for Cranberry at this point. The top of the order came up and Carter Barrett laced a two-run double. A couple batters later Sires hit a triple and Saragian drove him in. A couple passed balls and a walk had runners on first and third when, in an attempt to  get Cranberry to throw the ball towards second the Franklin runner seemed to taunt the catcher to make a decision.He did and the Franklin runner was caught in a pickle and the run scored from third. Somehow the runner got back safely to the bag as well.

Franklin scored nine total in the inning and back in command up 15-8.

Franklin's defense really kicked in with two infield forced outs at second including a stellar dive stop by Barrett who then alertly tossed to Goodman covering to end the inning.

The first game of the tournament the BAGUBA was the entire team. Against Butler Holden Goodman earned to team's accomplishment with the teams 2-1 victory in the final inning of the game with a huge walk-off double scoring Carter Barrett.

Korbyn Sires earned the accolades against Cranberry coming in to pitch three solid innings and his active bat. Read more here about what BAGUBA means.

Coach Goodman praise his team for never giving up or getting down. Against Butler it was just a tight game until the end. "You know the kids never gave up, we got into the bottom of the sixth and we had the top of our lineup up and that was the time to do it," he said. "The first three have been stellar at scoring runs from Rec Ball through All-stars. I think it's only happened one time this year when we haven't scored a run with one, two three being up."

And against Cranberry, after seemly having the wind taken out of their sails when Cranberry jumped right back they didn't give up. They kept chipping away and held Cranberry from scoring much.

"It's amazing how many we get right," an umpire recently said to me. Umpiring is a thankless job and I'll admit I too thought they got this one play at the plate wrong, but what looked like a ball that was out of the glove actually wasn't. The photographs showed the ball inside the glove in a sequence and the the player never had to pick it up off the ground.

And umpire joked with me last year that when he calls the perfect game he'll then find himself waking up from a dream. During the game there is a decision that has to be made from split second assessments on every pitch. Sometimes, they even know they messed-up and in my 26 years covering sports and getting to know several umpires, they will go over the games in their head afterwards and it does bother them when they know they missed a call.

They don't get enough credit for the job they do when they do it right, which is most of the time.

Clarion had runners on second and third looking as though they were going to answer Franklin's six-run top of the first bombardment. Ethan Ferguson drilled one right at Franklin's Korbyn Sires. The ball reached the the wincing first-baseman's glove before Ferguson's bat even hit the ground. It ricocheted off him and headed toward right field which would've easily scored one and maybe two runs since the runners were on second and third.
Holden Goodman, playing second, wasn't about to let that happen. He snagged that ball out of midair. Despite having a cannonball fired right at him, Sires kept his head focussed on the play, got to first for an "easy" put out of Ferguson to end the threat and maintain a 6-0 lead.

That was the kind of night the Franklin Little League All-stars were going to have.

Clarion did get some base-runners in the bottom of the first, but, Franklin's heads-up defense put a Clarion runner in a pickle and finally tagged out at first. It was apparent the Franklin had practiced for this scenario. "Fundamentals, it's about fundamentals," Franklin coach Ryan Goodman said. Clarion managed two other runners, but the Sires/Goodman heads-up play dashed Clarion's hopes at a score.

On the day, Franklin was as solid in the field as they were with their bats.

The second and third innings were largely uneventful. Clarion got a couple base runners again in the second  but no one got passed second base. In the third they were three up - three down. Franklin was quiet in those two innings not managing a base runner. But the fourth-inning was a near duplicate of the first as they erupted for five runs. They left two more on base, but the damage was already done. 

Clarion faced an 11-run deficit going into the fourth-inning with the end of the game at stake if they couldn't plate two.

It looked like they were about to go quietly with first two-batters going down. But then life. Suddenly they had runners on every base.
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Sires was in relief and in a little bit of trouble. He threw a wild pitch that made it passed Tanner Hefferman to the backstop. Clarion's Brady Clinger saw an opportunity to get one of those runs back and dashed toward home. Sires alertly also dashed to home plate from the mound. Hefferman corralled the ball from the short backstop, tossed to Sires in plenty of time to nab the sliding Clarion player to end the contest 11-0.

Goodman said he was proud of his kids smart and aggressive bats.

""We had a little problem last week in a scrimmage amongst ourselves. We had a lot of kids taking called third strikes," he said. "I wanted to make sure we didn't have that tonight, I don't think we had (a strikeout)(strikeout) tonight which is great, it's a testament to the kids hard work, they listen, its a great team."

Goodman and the other coaches have a little fun with the kids while preparing them to play.

"We decided we were going to give out awards, not necessarily to the kid that did the best, but to the kid that steps up when they might be struggling. We call it the BAGUBA."

(Pronounced Bah-Goo- ba.)

​He explained it's an acronym that his wrestling coach used in high school that stands for "Brutally Agressive Guy Uninhibited By Adversity."

"It is about the player who maybe struck out three times, but gets up to bat with two guys on and drills one to the outfield," Goodman explained.

​BAGUBA.

With the coach's concerns about strikeouts in practice and watching them all get in the batter's box against Clarion ready to play and go after the ball, the coaches couldn't pick one player, so they awarded it to the entire team.

​"There was no individual, it was a complete team effort."

Goodman has coached some of these kids over the last six years, but is in his first-year as all-star manager. He said this is a pretty good ball team. 

"I don't really see a hole, It's a solid team from start to finish. There is no individualism on the team, we preach that pretty heavy - one guy ain't gonna win it - it's gotta be a team effort."

Other teams in the bracket are: Oil City who took care of Knox 9-1 Friday night, Cranberry, who absolutely embarrassed New Bethlehem 18-0. Butler, whose game Friday was suspended due to rain against ACV/SOCAL. 

Rocky Grove's Alex Zinz was selected to play in the District 10 All-Star game. For Zinz to be included in this group is quite an honor and shows the level of skill Rocky Grove is now accustomed to play. The match will be at 6 p.m. at Meadville High School. Zinz will be on the team coached by Cochranton's Rob Cierniakoski who just took his team to the state championship match.

Other than the littlest of the littles, the Franklin Firestorm teams in the nine and under up through the eleven and under took home the first ever Kevin Porter trophies from the Franklin Little League tournament. Franklin baseball seems to be on fleek these days.

The annual tournament, renamed this year to honor Kevin Porter, a life-long supporter of Franklin youth baseball, who passed away last year, drew 22 teams to the Miller-Sibley complex this weekend to play baseball. 

Only an eight and under squad from Hermitage prevented the hosts from sweeping the event. The 10 and under team employed a very strong 5th inning to break a three up tie and go up three runs coming home. The 11 and under and 9 and under squads had already posted victories.

The McLane team seamed to knock on the door of a big inning at the top of the fifth  to ties the game. In the final inning some gutsy base running  got them to a position to have a big inning runout they were shut down in the end.

Miller-Sibley was very active over this weekend with some pretty fine ball being played. Below are some more photos from Sunday's 10U finals.

To view even more phots please visit ​https://sayerrich.zenfolio.com/p104695212

Franklin Little league is playing host to several regional little league teams at their annual tournament.

​This year the tournament was dedicated and renamed after long-time little league supporter and umpire Kevin Porter who passed away last year.

Four fields of baseball from eightand under to 11 and under brought a lot of people into Franklin from as far away as Harborcreek. ​​ 

The nine and under Franklin Firestorm team pictured here in many of these photos from Saturday, won the tournament Sunday afternoon

Below: I loved watching this pitcher, Liam Richter, who has a combination of several old school pitcher's styles all in one. A high  Dennis Eckersley-esque leg kick and a wind up that takes you back to the 1930s. Maybe even a little Mark "The Bird Fidrych lean in to see the call from catch. Awesome.

A few more photos from Saturday's nine and under game.

To see even more click https://sayerrich.zenfolio.com/p304871136.