HOW FAR? WELL...

SOUTH CENTRE TWP. — Benton coach Chip Sorber knew outsiders had little faith in the Tigers heading into Tuesday’s District 4 Class A semifinal against rival Millville.
Sorber, though, knew what he had in a bunch of underclassmen, having coached them since Little League. He had this innate ability to shut out the white noise, and for 21/2 hours, so too did the players.

While spectators were possibly thinking about the Quakers having swept the regular season series or having won 11 straight and 14 of their last 15, Sorber had a plan of attack to end that streak — and their season.

It worked to the tune of a 3-2 win for the Tigers and a berth in Friday’s district championship against top-seeded Cowanesque Valley, a 10-6 winner over Northeast Bradford on Tuesday. The winner of Friday’s game advances to the state tournament.

Sorber alternated all game between pitchers Ben Farwell and Owen Beishline. Whenever Beishline got into a pickle, the fourth-year coach brought back starting pitcher Farwell to keep the train on the tracks.

“Ben is No. 1 guy and for him to pitch Friday, he could only throw 75 pitches today,” Sorber said. “We made the change because we feel our second guy [Beishline] is capable and he’s pitched 18 innings before today. When he got in trouble, we turned back to Ben in hopes he would still be eligible for Friday’s game, but if we had to turn him loose to finish the game, we would have.”

Fortunately, the Tigers didn’t have to do that as he finished with 61 pitches.

Farwell answered the call every time they needed him. The first time came when Dylan Brokenshire hit a one-out triple in the fifth in 2-2 game. He got Chase Whitmoyer to strike out swinging, and later, with runners on second and third, got some help by Beishline at first with a great stretch to get a low throw by Maverick Good and get the Tigers out of the jam.

Farwell came back in during the eighth after Shane Johnson reached on an error and Landon Ellis singled to left.

Before throwing his first pitch, he picked Johnson off at second, something he prompted himself after being warned by Sorber that the Quakers are going to want to steal. He then got help from the defense again. This time it came from Cooper Schultz in center, who came up with Chase Reynolds’ single up the middle and threw Ellis out by a hair at third.

No matter how close it was — and Millville contested he was safe, even getting an umpire meeting over such — Benton players celebrated by throwing their hats and gloves in the air, celebrating they finally got the monkey off their back.

For the game, Farwell struck out four batters, and Beishline struck out seven — four looking. The pair seemingly had the Quakers battling from behind in the count all afternoon as 19 at-bats saw a two-strike count. The only walks given up were intentional to Shane Johnson.

Farwell’s save was made possible via a game-winning hit by pitch on the foot by Paxton Hart to score Layne Latorra, who singled to start the frame for the team’s third hit. He came around via an intentional walk to Farwell and an error on Dalton Koch’s popup as a pair of outfielders collided, but got the ball back in quickly.

That was the only time the Quakers were battling behind all game. They struck first with a pair of runs in the third inning against Farwell. He was called for a balk, awarding Keaton Brokenshire third base.

Things began quickly falling apart from there with Dylan Brokenshire reaching on a dropped infield pop-up, Curtis Whitmoyer hitting an RBI infield single that had a nasty hop to Good, and a sac-fly by Landon Ellis to score Dylan Brokenshire.

Still, coach Bryan Fought can’t help but think the Quakers, who went 2-for-7 with runners in scoring position, gave away the game.

“Give credit to Benton. They had a good game plan, and they executed it,” Fought said. “They made the plays we didn’t, and we had chances. We left too many runners on base, and I don’t feel like we had our best at-bats throughout the game. ... When we had the chance to do some damage, we didn’t. We took some called third strikes, and that’s inexcusable. We had to put the ball in play more today.”

Benton had an answer despite strong pitching from Curtis Whitmoyer and Chase Reynolds. They only needed two hits to tie the game in the top of the fourth. Cole Sorber, the grandson of coach Sorber, provided an opposite-field two-run double to right to score Beishline and Koch.

Whitmoyer and Reynolds lived up to their end of the pitcher’s duel, striking out 13 combined batters and having another four batters facing two-strike counts.

Despite not being around the team in the future as he takes time for himself while battling leukemia, Fought sees big things for the young Quakers’ squad.

“This isn’t how you want a season to end, but they did a lot of good things this year,” he said. “We won our first league title in a few years, and I’d say it’s more difficult to win that than a district title. Obviously, you’d love to win both, but to beat some tough teams like Montgomery for a league title says how good this young team is. There’s a lot of potential coming back and I think they’ll have a lot of success.”

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