Oil City Junior League baseball players won the District 25 championship las week in a very well fought battle against Titusville/AC Valley.

However, a few days later  District 25 administrator Bob Wilson was at a Titusville’s practice facility presenting T/ACV coach Keith Klingler with the championship banner.

Little League ruled that Oil City had ineligible players who did not compete in the proper number of games prior to the all-star tournament.

According to the Little League Baseball tournament rule book, a “league must have scheduled and played, at a minimum, a 12-game (per team) regular season…”

Oil City, which is made up of players from Oil City, Franklin and Rocky Grove, did not fulfill this requirement.
“We had eight games,” said Paul Myers, the OC coach and Oil City league president.
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During the seventh inning of the championship game Klingler said he learned about Oil City’s failure to have the proper number of prerequisite games when he asked someone to check Game Changer, an online program that teams use to keep their stats and game books.

Learning, that at least Game Changer indicated Oil City had not played enough games, he issued a protest prior to the end of the game which T/ACV lost 4-3.

The protest was heard and investigated by the league who requested all the game books and paperwork, By late Thursday the ruling was handed down and  Titusville/AC Valley were now named the District 25 champions.

“It just tainted the best junior league game I’ve ever seen,” Klingler said echoing what he stated after the loss.

Myers admitted the mistake was something he missed.
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Now Titusville moves on to play in the section tournament beginning Tuesday at Guys Mills against the Fairview/Lake City/Girard team from District 3.

"Who wants to make a play?" coach Jeff Steigerwald asked his Franklin 9-10 players as they faced a 5-3 deficit against Butler.

Answering that call in the final inning was his confident and quick witted son Phillip and the quiet and humble Gavin Matthews.

Franklin got a little help getting things going with Butler's pitcher struggling to find the strike zone Two walks and a  fielder's choice put two runner in scoring position with one of the Franklin's best hitters coming to the plate. Butler chose to intentionally walk Torin Schmidt to load the bases. 

This cost them as the pitcher's struggles continued and the walk in Franklin's fourth run. And the bases were still loaded. A strike out next gave them two outs.

Butler jumped out scoring one in the top of the first, but Franklin answered right back when Liam Richter walked and proceed to steal second, then third. Phillip Steigerwald, the coaches son got an RBI single. Teague Latshaw drilled a line drive past everyone to the left center fence for a double. Steigerwald to third. Schmidt then shaved the third base line for a double scoring two.

That would be it for scoring for Franklin until the final inning.

​Defensively the usually sure handed fielders began to struggle a little.  A dropped pop up with two outs and the chaos that followed with throwing errors tied the game.

If it wasn't for a heads up play by left fielder  Cam Adams who rushed in to cover third base to get the final out as the Butler runner tried to get an extra base in the melee, it could've been much worse.

Butler again added another couple runs on a fielding error and a couple good hits.

Franklin tried to get something going in the fifth but when a runner left early on a steal attemp,t he was sent back to second and they weren't able to bring him around.