Hempfield holds off La Salle College High School to win PIAA Class 6A baseball championship

STATE COLLEGE — The quiet tension of weeks of baseball on the edge, every pitch and at-bat charged with high stakes, is over.

Hempfield stood up to all of it over a long postseason of single elimination. Of course the game was on the line Thursday when Brody Gebhard threw strike three, the tying run on third base in the bottom of the seventh inning, to make the Black Knights PIAA Class 6A baseball champions.

The Knights edged La Salle College of the Philadelphia Catholic League 3-2 in a superb state final at Penn State’s Medlar Field at Lubrano Park.

Hempfield closes the book at 24-6. Four of the six losses were by one run, and somewhere in there the Knights figured out how to win the close ones.

“We’re been through some rough spots,” said senior Drew Benchich. “We finally learned how to take the punches and bounce back.”

One way to do that, which the Knights did Thursday against the Explorers, in their semifinal defeat of Downingtown West and through the entire postseason, was simply make fewer mistakes than the other guys.

Hempfield played clean defense for the second straight game. The Black Knights gave away no outs and handed the other guys minimal opportunities.

Which is how you beat a team like La Salle (25-4), which Hempfield coach Jeremy Morrison called, “a remarkable collection of talent. The pitching staff and the up-and-down talent on that team… remarkable.”

Not remarkable enough.

Hempfield scored all its runs in the third inning, all off Jack Pye, the Explorers’ ace. They came on a couple walks, an error, a hit batter and a huge two-run single by the Knights’ three-hole hitter, Brayden Hostetter.

That inning might have been a really huge one except for a diving, off-the-grass grab of Charles Sheerer’s sinking line drive by left fielder Antonio Astoli.

The game was right where Hempfield junior Brody Gebhard wants it — on his arm.

Gebhard, who threw a no-hitter in the quarterfinal round and got big late outs in relief in the semis, cruised through three innings Thursday against an elite lineup.

Matt Gannon, one of the Explorers’ big guns, doubled to start the fourth and came around to score.

Gannon got a one-out walk in the sixth — Gebhard’s first of the game — and La Salle followed with singles by Aimon Chandler (a Virginia Tech recruit) and Kevin Schmidt to make it a one-run game.

Gebhard got a flyout to send the game to the sixth. La Salle’s Cole Kochanowicz, a Lehigh recruit, had been excellent since relieving Pye.

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Now the Knights were one inning and three outs away.

Fans of both sides stood much of the rest of the way.

La Salle’s Andrew Bogansky led off the seventh with a well-placed fly ball to right-center for a double, and was bunted to third.

Gebhard, facing a unique brand of pressure, came up huge. He got a swinging strikeout for out No. 2, and the called strike three to end it.

“We knew they were not going to go away,” Morrison said. “Brody handled it. He wanted the ball, he felt healthy, and his composure was great.”

It is the eighth state baseball title for the Lancaster-Lebanon League (plus Lancaster Country Christian’s Class A title in 2015), and the second Class 6A title in three years. (Warwick won in 2022).

Even by the lofty local standards, this group had its own niche.

“It’s our camaraderie,” said senior pitcher Logan Harelson, who’ll leave for Division I South Florida in a couple weeks. “We love playing the game of baseball, and we love each other.”

Before the celebration got rowdy, Morrison draped a gold medal around each player’s neck.

He’s a quiet man and there were no histrionics. There was a lot of eye contact as he spoke to each player.

“As a coach,” Morrison said, “you have 20 different kids, and 20 different relationships. We wouldn’t be here without every single one of them.”

“Congrats on a great team and a great career,” Benchich said Morrison told him. “Today you’re a state champion.”

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