Emmaus and Kutztown will hold Junior Legion regional tourneys

Emmaus and North Parkland are among the teams competing.

By Keith Groller 
of The Morning Call

The East has become such a big beast when it comes to Pennsylvania Junior Legion baseball that it now needs two regional tournaments to sort out who's going to advance to the state tournament.

Both regionals, involving boys age 14 and 15, begin Tuesday and are within 20 minutes of each other in the greater Lehigh Valley area.

Emmaus is hosting the Region II tournament, while Kutztown welcomes eight teams, including Lehigh Valley League champion North Parkland, for the Region I event.

The top two teams in each regional advance to the state championships in Homer City, Indiana County.

Emmaus, which last hosted the Junior Legion regionals at Community Park in 1992, finished fifth in the LVJLBL regular season and then went 0-2 in the postseason.

The Hornets (15-7) are considered a longshot to get to Saturday when the regional finals will be held, but long-time manager Paul Stauffer says stranger things have happened.

''In baseball, you just never know,'' he said. ''If we can catch the ball, we can win some games.''

Stauffer says the favorite is Boyertown.

''They still have one of the premier programs in the state and, probably, in the country,'' Stauffer said. ''I look at the list of teams coming here and I don't recognize any of them except Boyertown, and I've been around a long time.''

The other teams in the eight-team, double-elimination field are Coatesville, Bensalem, Milford, Whitemarsh, Wayne and Fredericksburg.

Emmaus plays Fredericksburg, a Lebanon League rep, at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the final game of the four-game, opening-day card which begins at 10 a.m. Emmaus will play the latest games possible as long as it stays in the tournament.

Stauffer said his team has four solid pitchers — Lee Nonnemacher, Sean Reynolds, Caleb Fick and Chris Yetter.

''Who knows what can happen if we play well,'' Stauffer said.

For North Parkland, pitching and defense are a big part of the championship equation. But in winning the league championship, the Buffaloes scored 49 runs in five games.

''Still, pitching will be the key,'' said coach Kurt Weber. ''We've been playing good baseball. We just need to keep it going.''

Among the standouts for the Buffaloes are Alex Atiyeh, Bryan Shellhamer, Ben Frederick, Dave Moller, George Horn, Jr., and Jake Palumbo. Shellhamer tossed a five-hitter in the 7-3, league title-clinching win over Southern Lehigh.

The team will miss its catcher, Owen Thomas, who will be doing charity work with underprivileged kids in Tennessee this week.

''He'll be back for states if we can get that far,'' Weber said.

North Parkland (23-3-2) went 31-7 and was a state runnerup to Boyertown in 2001, but went 0-2 in last year's regional tournament.

The Buffaloes, whose lone losses were to Quakertown (twice) and South Parkland, begin play at noon Tuesday against a team from Lower Montco. Kutztown plays the No. 1 team from the Lebanon League at 4 p.m.

Four games, beginning at 10 a.m., will be played each of the first two days on two separates fields in Kutztown Community Park. Because there are no lights, the latest any game will start in Kutztown is 4 p.m.