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West Allegheny outlasts Peters Township to win school’s 5th WPIAL championship

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Wednesday, June 1, 2022 | 11:48 PM

Not much has come easy this season for West Allegheny, a team that battled through injuries and plenty of inconvenience to reach Wild Things Park.

So, a four-hour championship fit them well.

As Wednesday night threatened to become Thursday morning, West Allegheny’s Anthony Raineri bounced an eighth-inning single past second base to score Brady Miller with the go-ahead run in an extra-innings victory over top-seeded Peters Township, 5-4, in a WPIAL Class 5A championship delayed twice by lightning.

West A coach Bryan Cornell said he’d learned this year to never count his guys out.

“What else is this team going to do?” Cornell said. “They’ve done everything already. They’re going to make it an extra-inning game through two rain delays. That’s just them.”

The marathon game ended around 11:15 p.m.

The WPIAL championship was the fifth overall for third-seeded West Allegheny (19-4) and the first since 2014.

“It’s amazing how a group of guys who weren’t expected to do much, came together,” Raineri said. “We’re here winning the WPIAL title.”

The first weather delay came in the sixth inning with West Allegheny leading 4-3. Peters Township emerged from that 40-minute pause to quickly tie the score. Drew Ripepi earned a two-out walk and Jack Kail followed with an RBI single.

Tied 4-4, the game was again halted prior to the eighth inning.

Peters Township (21-2) was seeking its third WPIAL title after winning consecutive championships in 2007-08. But the team stranded 10 runners, including one apiece in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings.

“We were right there,” Peters coach Rocky Plassio said. “We were just one key hit finding a hole from maybe swinging that momentum our way. We for whatever reason couldn’t find it today.”

West A pitcher Nathan Nolan earned the win by holding Peters Township to two hits and one run over five innings of relief. He walked two and hit three batters. Nolan’s outing was interrupted twice by 30-minute lightning delays, but each time he returned to the mound to keep pitching.

“It was an adventure,” Nolan said, “but believe it or not, I really didn’t do much (to stay loose). I sat there, drank some water and went out and threw.”

West Allegheny was a WPIAL semifinalist a year ago, but lost three of its four returning starters to injury. That included Auburn recruit Gavin Miller, who missed most of the season with a wrist injury. He returned only last week and tripled and scored in Wednesday’s first inning.

The team hit a rough patch late in the regular season with four losses in a six-game stretch but now has won eight games in a row.

“This is a great group of guys that came together at the right moment,” Gavin Miller said.

Nobody had better timing than Raineri. In the top of the eighth inning, Brady Miller singled and reached second on a balk. With two outs, Raineri connected with a low curveball and sent it back through the middle.

“It was weakly hit but it gets the job done,” Raineri said. “When saw it going to the outfield I said, ‘Oh my God.’ There’s no way I just did that. I was on top of the world.”

Cornell is an aggressive third base coach, so he waved Brady Miller home. The throw from center field was offline, and Miller scored for a 5-4 lead.

“We’re aggressive on the base paths,” Miller said. “That’s won us a lot of games this year.”

West Allegheny scored two runs each in the first two innings and one in the eighth. Peters Township scored one in the first, two in the third and one in the sixth.

Senior starter Sam Miller went 5 1/3 innings for Peters Township, allowing four runs on three hits and five walks. He struck out four. Tucker Ferris pitched the final eight outs, allowing one run on three hits.

West Allegheny got three innings out of starter Anthony Pass, who allowed three runs on four hits and three walks.

West A took a 2-0 lead when Joe Pustover drew a first-inning walk, Gavin Miller hit a run-scoring triple and Colin Marinpetro followed with an RBI sacrifice fly.

Peters Township’s Jack Kail tripled and scored in the bottom half to cut West A’s lead in half.

West A extended its lead in the second when Raineri drew a leadoff walk and scored on Joe Pustover’s single. Pustover later scored for a 4-1 lead. In the third, Peters Township converted two hits and three walks into two runs. Ripepi and Nico Melograne each scored, cutting West A’s lead to 4-3.

The loss was only the second this season for Peters Township and snapped a 10-game winning streak. Both teams qualify for the state playoffs starting Monday.

“It’s not going to be easy (to refocus), because they really wanted this one, for obvious reasons,” Plassio said. “Now we’re going to have to find a way to fight and make our way back to maybe have an opportunity to play someone like them again.”

Watch an archived broadcast of this game on Trib HSSN.

Chris Harlan is a TribLive reporter covering sports. He joined the Trib in 2009 after seven years as a reporter at the Beaver County Times. He can be reached at charlan@triblive.com.

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