Our Lady of the Sacred Heart will look to capture the school’s first WPIAL baseball championship Wednesday when the Chargers take on Freedom Area at 2 p.m. in the Class 2A title matchup at EQT Park in Washington, Pa.
OLSH reached the WPIAL championship game in 2013 but lost to Western Beaver when the Beavers rallied for two runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to claim a 3-2 win.
The Chargers entered this year’s tournament play as the No. 2 seed with a 13-7 record and blanked 10th-seeded New Brighton, 8-0, before downing Riverview, 3-1, in the semifinals.
Eighth-seeded Freedom, meanwhile, took down No. 9 Apollo-Ridge in the opening round, then knocked off top-seeded Neshannock, 3-0, to reach its semifinal date with Laurel.
There, the Bulldogs scored two late runs to down the Spartans, 8-7, and set up Wednesday’s District 7 championship matchup.
Both teams are guaranteed spots in the PIAA tournament, regardless of the outcome of Wednesday’s game.
Last week’s semifinal win over Riverview marked the first time OLSH had prevailed in a WPIAL semifinal matchup under coach Phil McCarren, who has been at the helm since 2010.
The team had made it to the semifinals three previous times but came up short each time.
The Chargers’ No. 1 pitcher, Iseia Fields Schulz is coming off an outstanding performance in his team’s first WPIAL tournament game, as he held New Brighton to three hits while striking out 10 and walking only three. All three of the hits Schulz allowed were singles.
Schulz is 8-1 on the season.
Offensively, the team is led by Gino Williams, who is hitting .439. Chad Minton leads the team in RBIs with 20 while Dean Douglass has 19. Minton is batting .333 while Douglass owns a .373 batting average.
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