WEST PITTSTON – Late in the batting order, late in the season, Wyoming Area transformed itself from a .500 squad into a championship baseball team.
The Warriors were 6-6 before knocking off Lackawanna League Division 2 and District 2 Class 5A contender Wallenpaupack to start a five-game winning streak that carried through Thursday’s 11-0, five-inning district Class 4A championship game rout of visiting Honesdale.
“When we really started our run here with the ‘Paupack game, it’s been the bottom half of the order that’s making us go,” Warriors coach Rob Lemoncelli said. “When the top half of the order, the big hitters, when maybe they don’t get a hit or maybe they don’t have a quality at-bat, the bottom of the order has been there to pick us up over the past two-to-three weeks.”
That continued Thursday when Jason Wiedl drove in three runs from the ninth spot in the order.
Wiedl is 5-for-15 in the winning streak, matching his hit total for the first dozen games.
A team that was getting much of its offense early on from leadoff hitter Evan Melberger and the Division I battery of juniors J.J. Hood and Jake Kelleher, suddenly has a variety of weapons.
In the eighth spot, Jack Mathis is 6-for-11 in the last four games after being 1-for-16 on the season to that point. He has six RBI in the five-game winning streak after having just two prior to the streak.
Sam Supey reached base in all three plate appearances from the seventh spot Thursday, with a hit and two walks. He scored two runs and has scored in every game during the winning streak.
Johnny Morgan, hitting sixth, had two hits, two runs and two RBI, giving him three of each in the last two rounds of the district playoffs.
Hunter Lawall, technically in the middle of the order from the fifth spot, is 7-for-19 (.368) during the streak, improving his average while driving in four runs and scoring three. He had a double and homer in a 10-0 rout of Hanover Area.
Mathis had a game-breaking, three-run double against Valley View in the 9-7, semifinal victory.
Thursday, it was Wiedl leading the way.
“I thought we strung together a lot of big hits; a lot of big hits in big spots,” said Wiedl, a senior shortstop. “A lot of timely hits. It was just a good overall game.”
Wiedl singled in the third of five runs in the third inning by getting a ball through the left side with the bases loaded and two out. His two-run single to left field was the last of five straight by the Warriors – all from the fifth through ninth hitters – and drove in the run the team needed to clinch early on the 10-run rule as well as another for insurance.
