Weaver Custom Homes wins 10U WYB City Series title
Weaver Custom Homes won the Wooster Minors 10U City Series that concluded June 29. The team consisted of Tanner Pettorini, front left, Benny Maibach, Emmett Shows, Cais Steele, Kyle Gross; Kaden Melillo, back left, Alan Jimenez Cuevas, Carsyn Berry, Drystan Pajak-Stenger, Cooper Schafrath, Kaiiden Piurowski and Dominic Colaprete.
A highly competitive season in the Wooster Youth Baseball season 10U Minors Division ended with surprisingly little drama in the championship game at Denton Fuller Field Wednesday night.
Weaver Custom Homes excelled in all phases of the game to defeat Bowman Beverage 13-1 in four innings in the winner-take-all Game 3 of the City Series.
“This is really exciting,” said Weaver Custom Homes coach Tim Pettorini Jr., whose team ended the season with a 13-5 record. “It's a great group of kids, who I essentially had for two straight years.”
The home builders finished second last year, but it was far from an easy road to the title in 2022. They almost had their permits pulled before even getting the chance to construct the City Series title.
“We barely got into the City Series — we lost the last game of the (round-robin) playoffs,” Pettorini said. “This was a tough series, but our kids came through tonight.
“Everyone contributed and that's the nice part. All 12 of our guys get up there and swing the bats and that's the purpose of this league at this level. We're real proud of them.”
Scoring two runs apiece for Weaver Custom Homes were Benny Maibach, Tanner Pettorini, Dom Colaprete, Kaiiden Piurowski, Kaiden “Big Pop” Melillo and Alan Jimenez-Cuevas.
Pettorini was 3 for 3 with a double, while Melillo blasted a triple and Jimenz-Cuevas ripped a double.
Maibach played outstanding defense at second base, including making a running catch of a fly ball with the bases loaded that he turned into a double play.
Piurowski pitched 3 1-3 innings, with Mellillo coming on in relief to retire the final two hitters.
Tim Pettorini did a good job coaching along with assistants Frank Colaprete (College of Wooster football coach), Ben Maibach and Joe Klima, but admitted he struggled mightily with the spelling of his players’ names.
“I realized after tonight that of 18 lineup cards I made out, not one of them had the correct spelling of all the kids’ names,” he said. “We would win the all Scrabble-team award. They’re all good ball players and worked hard. It’s a developmental league, but winning is still more fun than losing.”
The Bowman Beverage team wasn’t smiling much after the game, but coach Derek Ickes reminded them that they had a great season to come up just one win short of the title in the six-team league.
“For as long as the season’s been, this group's battled through injuries, vacations — we pulled a kid up from the coach pitch league tonight to play in this game and he wound up pitching,” Ickes said. “Through all the adversity, I couldn't be any more proud of how much we’ve grown from the beginning of the year to this part of the season. It's just a special group, which I can't wait to see continue in Wooster baseball.”
Bowman Beverage (13-3) topped Weaver Custom Homes in the last game of regular-season to earn the top seed for the playoffs.
Harper McDaniel and Blake Terakedis were the veteran leaders for Bowman Beverage, but Ickes said it was a total team effort.
“We got so much help from everybody throughout the year,” Ickes said. “I wouldn't want to single anyone out.
“Every game there was a new kid catching popups, making double plays in the field, or getting big hits. We had kids that started the season batting at the bottom of the batting lineup, who were in the middle of the lineup and knocking in runs in the playoff games.”