Penn State York baseball earns spot in Small College World Series

Penn State York baseball will play for a national championship for the first time in program history.

A week and a half after the Nittany Lions’ conference tournament run was cut short, head coach Todd Meckley’s team was among 10 squads selected for the USCAA’s Small College World Series on Tuesday afternoon. PSY will be the No. 9 seed in the tournament, which begins next Monday in DuBois, Pennsylvania.

The Lions are 25-9 this season, but their future was uncertain after an 11-5 loss to Penn State Brandywine in a PSUAC tournament play-in game April 27. PSY ultimately beat out Brandywine for one of the final spots in the World Series.

No. 9-seed Penn State York will battle No. 8 Wright State Lake at 1 p.m. Monday, May 13, with the winner to face No. 1 Penn State DuBois — the PSUAC champion, reigning national champ and tournament host — later that day. The field will be down to three teams by Thursday, with a champion to be crowned either that evening or in a winner-take-all clash Friday, May 17.

Meckley’s squad stated its championship case during a 13-game winning streak that spanned more than three weeks in March. PSY enjoyed a separate seven-game streak in April. The Nittany Lions have averaged 7.5 runs per game while allowing just 3.8 per contest.

York and DuBois will be joined in the World Series by PSUAC East champion and conference tournament runner-up Penn State Schuylkill, which earned the No. 7 seed. The field also includes three schools from Ohio, two from Florida and one each from Virginia and North Carolina.

SPARTAN SENDOFF

Six of York College’s 10 spring sports teams saw their 2024 campaigns come to a close last week, but two Spartan squads will compete for NCAA Division III championships. The women’s lacrosse team punched its ticket with a dramatic 8-7 home win over Stevenson in the MAC Commonwealth final on Saturday, while men’s golf captured the MACC title a week earlier in Fleetwood.

York’s No. 16-ranked women’s lacrosse team received a tough NCAA Tournament draw, as the Spartans will travel to Middletown, Connecticut, and face Johnson and Wales (Providence) at 1 p.m. Saturday for the right to play No. 2-seed Wesleyan in Sunday’s Round of 32. 

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The men’s golf team won the two-day MACC tournament by seven strokes over Fleetwood, with all five Spartans finishing in the top 12 individually. The NCAA D-III Championships will be staged May 14-17 at Boulder Creek Country Club in Las Vegas. York College last reached NCAAs in 2021.

Men’s and women’s track and field will compete at the AARTFC Outdoor Championships next week in the program’s final event before nationals. Senior Andrew Mott, an NCAA qualifier in 2023, led the way for the Spartans at last weekend’s MAC Championships at Widener University with a first-place finish in the men’s shot put. He was named MAC Men’s Field Athlete of the Year following the meet.

Of the six Spartan teams to lose in their conference tournaments, men’s lacrosse was certainly the biggest surprise, as No. 1-seed York went 7-0 in MACC regular-season play before suffering an 11-10 home loss to Eastern last Wednesday.

York College softball was runner-up in the MACC tournament, winning two elimination games Friday before falling at top-seeded Eastern on Saturday. Women’s golf also settled for second place, as the Spartans were 20 strokes behind Alvernia after the first day of the MAC Championship. The tournament’s second round was rained out, sending Alvernia to NCAAs.

After the men’s and women’s tennis teams were ousted in the MACC semifinals last week, baseball was officially eliminated Monday with a 9-2 loss at Messiah. The Spartans split a Friday doubleheader to force a Game 3 in the semifinal series, but they couldn’t keep the Falcons grounded.

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TRACKING DOWN TITLES

Shippensburg men’s track and field won its 15th consecutive Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) outdoor championship on Sunday at its home stadium, and the Raiders received plenty of help from former York County stars.

Sophomore Garrett Quinan, a Kennard-Dale graduate, was named Most Valuable Athlete at the meet after winning both Friday’s 10K (31:26.47) and Saturday’s 5K (15:02.85). The wins contributed 20 points toward Shippensburg’s team score of 246.83, which was 98.5 points clear of second-place Slippery Rock.

Freshman Bernard Bell III (South Western) took second in the 110-meter hurdles with a time of 14.51 seconds, the fifth-fastest in Shippensburg history. Bell also helped the Raiders’ 4x100 relay team finish second.

Another former Mustang, Noah Bankert, placed 12th in the decathlon, in which sophomore Ryan Murphy (Delone Catholic) took fifth. Freshman Jackson Gutekunst (Dallastown) was seventh in the 1,500 meters and junior Kenny Rhyne (Susquehannock) tied for eighth in the high jump.

The Shippensburg women’s team also won the PSAC title on Sunday. Freshman Ryleigh Marks (Susquehannock) was third in the 100 hurdles and eighth in the high jump, while junior Victoria Mattioli (Red Lion) placed fifth in both the 5K and 10K. Delone Catholic’s Maddie Sieg finished 10th in the javelin.

The NCAA Division II National Championships will be staged in Emporia, Kansas, from May 23-25.

HOLDING COURT

Red Lion graduate Cooper Wheeler has been an ace for the Penn State Harrisburg men’s tennis team all season, and the freshman helped lead the Nittany Lions to the United East Conference tournament title on Saturday at the Hershey Racquet Club. Wheeler, the Nittany Lions’ No. 1 singles and doubles player, put a doubles point on the board during a 5-2 win over top-seeded St. Mary’s (Md.) in Saturday’s title bout.

Penn State Harrisburg will face Mary Washington in the first round of the NCAA Division III Tournament on Friday in Cleveland.

The Division I men’s tennis team tournament is down to 16 teams, and Dallastown’s Holden Koons will be part of the action for No. 6 Wake Forest. The Demon Deacons beat South Carolina State and Arizona State last weekend to set up a Super Regional matchup with Stanford this Friday. The top eight teams will duke it out next week, with the NCAA singles and doubles tournaments to follow. Koons and Dhakshineswar Suresh received an at-large bid to the doubles draw.