KUTZTOWN >> Coming off a lackluster start on the mound in the Berks County Senior American Legion playoffs, Connor Moyer just wanted another shot at redemption.
This time around, his Boyertown offense had his back.
Buoyed by a four-run head start in the top of the first inning, Moyer, a 2024 Boyertown High graduate, shook off the two runs that he yielded in the bottom of the first inning and cruised to a complete game 6-2 win over third-seeded Norchester in an elimination game at Timothy M. Breidagen Field on Saturday. The fifth-seeded Bears lived to fight another day, winning their second straight elimination contest and advancing to play top-seeded Reading on Sunday at 4 p.m. No. 2 Kutztown will host No. 4 West Lawn in the other Sunday semifinal.
The top two teams remaining in the Berks County bracket will play in Monday’s championship game, and regardless of result both will advance to the next round of the postseason at the Region 2 Tournament from July 20-24 at Emmaus Community Park. So, a win on Sunday would allow Moyer to keep playing baseball for at least another week-plus with a group of guys he’s been competing with on the diamond for most of his life.
“Being the starting pitcher for the away team that puts up a four-spot right away, I love pitching behind bats that get the job done,” Moyer said. “I’ve been playing with these kids forever. Seven or eight of us have been playing since tee-ball on up, so it’s been great to get one last run in with the guys.”
Moyer allowed just four hits over seven innings, with the lone blemish being a two-run single in the bottom of the first off the bat of Norchester starting pitcher David Levengood. He struck out five and walked three, pitching loose and confident three days after he and the Bears were throttled 10-0 by West Lawn in a first-round loss of the double-elimination tournament.
Boyertown staked Moyer to a 4-0 lead by batting around in the top of the first inning. Second baseman Logan Barndt doubled down the right field line with one out to score Randy Wynings, and Moyer helped his own cause two batters later with a run-scoring single to left. First baseman Wes Bieber’s own RBI hit to left plated a third run, and Moyer later crossed the plate on a wild pitch.
“It means so much to be able to throw that first punch and stay ahead the entire game,” added Barndt, who, like Moyer, recently graduated from Boyertown. “That was very much a key inning.”
Moyer had a bit of a shaky bottom half of the first, but quickly course-corrected and retired the next seven Norchester batters after Levengood’s two-run hit. The Bulldogs put their first two runners on base in both the sixth and seventh innings, but Moyer deftly worked out of the jams.
“He was working ahead early, throwing strikes and letting us play our defense,” said Barndt, who added a sacrifice fly in a two-run second inning. “When a pitcher is walking guys, it’s hard to play defense behind that. When you’re getting ahead, that’s more fun. There was a whole lot of energy.”
The Boyertown Senior Legion program is one of the more storied and successful ones of its kind. The Bears have won 23 state championships, nine Mid-Atlantic regional titles and two national championships, but it took this year’s iteration time to find its footing.
Boyertown went 7-6 during the regular season and seemed destined for an early postseason exit after the West Lawn debacle. Instead, led by their eight seniors who desperately wished to avoid an early exit, the Bears rallied, first knocking off No. 8 Shillington on Thursday before their hot start against Norchester, a team mainly comprised of players from Owen J. Roberts.
“We put our heads down and came together, which we lacked earlier this season,” Moyer said. “We know we can compete, even if we didn’t do that earlier in the year as much as we would have liked. The past couple of days we’ve been really locked in and we realized what we had to do to get the job done. We realize that we’re better than these teams.”
Boyertown manager Steve Price is an alum of the Senior Legion program himself, and while he said it’s been a process getting this year’s group to fully coalesce, the previous potholes have made the past couple of days worth the wait.
“Me and most of my coaching staff played here,” Price said. “We won state championships and we won Berks County titles. We’ve been telling the kids that we want them to have that same feeling of winning something and bringing it back home to Boyertown. They’re starting to know what it feels like for the town to have your back. This team and this sport means a lot to the town, and I’m really happy that they’re starting to embrace that.”
Boyertown is also beginning to embrace the momentum presently sitting on its shoulders. How the Bears finish is all that matters now, and Moyer, Barndt and the team’s players who won’t be back next summer fully understand that this is the final chance to make sure their hometown remembers this group for the long haul, like some of those squads that Price played on.
“Our main goal is to leave nothing on the table,” Barndt said. “You don’t want to look back in 10 years and say ‘Oh we could have done this, this and that.’ You want to leave it all out there.”
Moyer concurred.
“It’s been awesome, and we want to play as much baseball as we can before it’s over,” he said. “There’s no one else I’d rather be playing with than these guys.”
Boyertown 6, Norchester 2
Boyertown 4 2 0 0 0 0 0 – 6 3 1
Norchester 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 – 2 4 1
WP: Connor Moyer- 7ip, 4h, 2er, 3bb, 5k
LP: David Levengood- 6ip, 3h, 6r (4er), 3bb, 5k
2B: B- Logan Barndt
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