PIAA Class 6A Baseball: Coatesville punishes mistake-prone Bonner in states opener

SPRINGFIELD TWP. — The last four springs have ended in heartbreak for Bonner & Prendergast’s baseball team.

Four straight years, the Friars have made the state semifinals. Four straight years, their season has ended, with winning runner stranded on base, in walk-off fashion, in all manner of pain.

Monday offered an earlier but no less painful entry to that register.

Coatesville capitalized on four Bonner errors and five wild pitches to win with just two earned runs, punishing the District 12 champion, 8-7, in the first round of the PIAA Class 6A tournament at La Salle College High School.

Jayden Guiseppe got the win for Coatesville (19-6), battling through six innings. His two-run double to center off the first pitch he saw from Danny Buckton put the Red Raiders up for good at 6-5 in the fifth.

“I was just trying to put something in play,” Giuseppe said. “I got a fastball inside, and I turned on it.”

But final difference on the scoreboard was emblematic: What goes down as a two-run single to center by nine-hitter AJ Rubincam to make it 8-5 but was really a pop up barely 20 feet into the outfield grass that fell between Bonner’s shortstop and second baseman.

It was the second pop up that should’ve been caught in that inning, plus a throwing error on a sacrifice bunt. Coatesville made the most of the six outs it was given, and the third seed from District 1 is moving on for the first time since winning the opener in the 2013 tournament.

Coatesville made the mistakes hurt.

Nuge Williard tripled with two outs and none on in the third. The inning should have ended there if Jack Redding had handled a grounder at third by Shane Monaghan. He didn’t. Willard scored. Dylan Jeffers walked. Jeffers and Monaghan moved up 180 feet each on two wild pitches by Bonner starter Michael Klawansky, Monaghan scoring. Then an RBI single by Adam Clark made it 3-0.

Klawansky, who threw four wild pitches in the third, didn’t survive the frame, lifted for Buckton, who recorded a strikeout to end the threat.

Buckton allowed a run in the fourth on a walk, a throwing error by the catcher, a ground out and a wild pitch where Buckton had the tag down on Sean Kinzler but dropped the ball.

Bonner (18-7) never stayed down long, thanks to a lineup that would have been enough to win the game. The Friars rapped out 11 hits, six for extra bases. They got to Giuseppe for nine hits and six earned runs in six innings.

“You can’t have a big head,” said outfielder Ryan Friel, who had two hits and scored twice. “You do something good and then you just bring it back together. You stay with your team. You don’t try to do too much, because anything can happen.”

The left-handed Giuseppe initially had success against a Bonner lineup that has four left-handed hitters in the top six spots.

But they started to decipher Giuseppe’s breaking pitches and tendency to work backward. The quartet, including Friel, ended up 6-for-12 against him.

“I just try to get ahead of the count, offspeeds, anything to work,” Giuseppe said. “… I always do that (work backward) with lefties, so it’s just a normal thing for me. And it’s strong for me.”

“We’re keeping that approach that we stay to the left-center gap and we’re not trying to pull the ball and spin off,” Friel said. “We’re trying to let the ball get deep and go to the opposite side. And we did that pretty well when we got into that groove.”

Bonner answered Coatesville’s three-spot with four in the bottom of the third. Friel ripped a two-run single, Gavin DiRita blasted an RBI triple and then scored on a wild pitch.

When Kinzler’s run tied the game at 4, Bonner went straight back ahead, Cole Romano walking and scoring on Corey Sheridan’s triple.

Even after what could’ve been a dispiriting top of the fifth, Bonner kept pushing, down 8-5. Buckton kept Coatesville quiet, tossing into the seventh. He allowed four hits and five runs, only two of them earned.

Friel tripled in the fifth but was stranded. Owen Lockhart led off the sixth with a double, was sacrificed to third and scored on Joey Graziani’s sac fly. Friel, who was a homer shy of the cycle, doubled with one out in the seventh off the closer Monaghan and scored on DiRita’s single. Loud outs from Redding and Lockhart to the outfield left the potential tying run rooted at first.

Coatesville’s win ends a wait of more than a decade. The Red Raiders were last in states in 2022, losing in the first round.

“It means a lot to us,” Giuseppe said. “It has been years. So this is the team. We’re trying to make it far.”

Bonner’s run ends two rounds short of where it has been the last four years. The Friars have risen steadily in classification thanks to championship points, from 4A in 2021 and 2022 to 5A the last two years to now the state’s biggest class. They’ve become factors in the Catholic League, winning two of the last three titles.

The Class of 2025 isn’t the first to leave disappointed by a PIAA outcome. Players like Friel, a junior who set the program’s single-season hits record with 44 in 25 games, isn’t the first set of underclassmen to be emboldened by one.

“As a freshman and as a sophomore, losing both times in the semis, it’s pretty hard, then losing in the (first round) this year it’s even harder,” he said. “It was a little upsetting for me when I started, but now it’s more of like, I really want to get back. And, I’ve got one more year to prove everyone wrong and get a state ‘chip and keep this PCL run going.”