Throwback Thursday: A banner day for YAIAA on this date in 2013
A year ago today, three teams stamped their names in the YAIAA history books.
The league brought home two District 3 baseball championships — both of which were the first in program history — and the YAIAA saw its first victory ever in the PIAA girls' lacrosse tournament.
Those baseball titles for York Catholic and Delone Catholic, and the landmark win for the Kennard-Dale girls' lacrosse team, made for quite a memorable Wednesday, back on May 29, 2013.
The achievements weren't lost on the players involved in the action.
"We get to hang the first banner," York Catholic starting pitcher Erich Hartman said at the time. "It's really cool."
Exactly a year later, here's a look back at a memorable day in YAIAA history.
York Catholic
In the first year after York Catholic moved down to Class A in baseball, the Fighting Irish dominated the field. In their three tournament games, they racked up a combined score of 35-4, and they capped their run as the No. 2 seed with a 7-1 victory against Lancaster County Christian.
A big third inning staked the Irish to a 4-1 lead, with run-scoring hits by Clint Bohn and Pat Clement, who finished the day a home run short of the cycle. That was all the margin Hartman would need
"It's nice to get insurance runs as a pitcher," Hartman said at the time. "Man, they came through today. The hitting was fantastic."
Hartman pitched a complete game, keeping his pitch count low. He faced more than four batters in only one inning — the third — and gave up only one hit after that. York Catholic coach Joe Gurreri called it the best performance of the season for Hartman, who struck out the final Lancaster County Christian batter to seal the win and the right to hang that banner back home.
Delone Catholic
After five losses in the District 3 Class AA championship game, and 23 appearances in the tournament, the Squires finally broke through for the first baseball title in school history.
The victory came with another notable footnote: With the win, Delone Catholic became the first school to win District 3 championships in football, basketball and baseball in the same school year. Brett Smith and Jimmy O'Boyle were on all three championship teams.
In the baseball championship game, Dalton Haymaker pitched a complete-game shutout, striking out four and walking one to help the Squires beat Kutztown, 4-0.
The win didn't come as easily as the score indicated, though. Haymaker found himself in jams in each of the first two innings. He loaded the bases with one out to bring up Kutztown's best hitter but induced a double play to end the threat.
After that, Haymaker settled down, allowing just three baserunners over the final six innings. And the Squires offense stepped up. Austin Buckley and Tanner Orndorff hit RBI singles in the first inning, and Austin Roth drove in a pair of runs.
And Delone Catholic assistant coach Frank Felix — who was the head coach for the Squires' first four title game losses — accepted the championship trophy.
Kennard-Dale
Since lacrosse became a YAIAA varsity sport in 2009, Kennard-Dale has dominated the girls' league. The Rams have won every YAIAA Division II championship, and they won the first three league tournaments before York Catholic unseated the Rams this season.
But even the YAIAA-powerhouse Rams weren't able to break through on the PIAA stage.
Until May 29,2013, that is.
Kennard-Dale earned a 16-7 victory against District 11 champion Southern Lehigh in the first round of the PIAA tournament — the first state win for the Rams and the first for any team from the YAIAA.
Nicole Black poured in four goals and four assists, and Lyndsey Duty and Morgan Day added two goals apiece. The Rams turned a 3-2 deficit midway through the first half into a 10-3 halftime lead, and they forced the running-clock mercy rule to kick in with a 10-goal lead.
Kennard-Dale's prize for the history-making win? A quarterfinal matchup with eventual state champion Harriton, which ended the Rams' season, 20-9.
"It's been a record-breaking year," Kennard-Dale coach Kelly Wetzel said last year. "Lots of firsts. Winning our first state game and being the first from York County to do it is a great feeling."
GameTimePA.com archives were consulted in the making of this article.