Dallas players get ready to leave their field on Wednesday afternoon after heavy rain ended practice after about 30 minutes. The District 2 champion Mountaineers will play District 6 champion Bellefonte for the PIAA Class 4A state championship at 1:30 p.m. Friday at Penn State University.
Fred Adams | For Times Leader
DALLAS TWP. — Dallas was rolling through its baseball schedule. Then the calendar flipped to May and the season flipped as well.
The Mountaineers lost four consecutive games to start the month. They went from the top seed in the District 2 Class 4A standings to second place, where they resided when the regular season ended.
Now Dallas is the only District 2 team remaining as the Mountaineers play District 6 champion Bellefonte for the PIAA Class 4A state championship at 1:30 p.m. Friday at Medlar Field at Penn State University.
Dallas was 11-2 — with its only losses to eventual Wyoming Valley Conference Division 1 champion Hazleton Area — when it embarked on a May schedule that didn’t appear to have many stumbling blocks. Yet, the Mountaineers tripped up several times.
First came a 7-1 loss to Pittston Area. Then consecutive setbacks to an improving Wyoming Valley West team 7-0 and 11-10 followed. The Mountaineers then managed just five hits and struck out nine times in a 4-3 loss to Crestwood, which was on a bit of a run at the time.
“It was tough,” Dallas first-year coach Mike Viglone said. “They were down on themselves and each other, things like that. Baseball is a funny game. You just have to get through those things. They picked each other up as we started to turn things around.
“It happens to teams all the time. You go through stretches like that, but sometimes you need them.”
Dallas lost one more time — 6-5 to Back Mountain rival Lake-Lehman — before the D2-4A playoffs started. There, the Mountaineers outscored three opponents 25-3, including a 11-0 rout of top-seeded Honesdale for the championship.
“We just had to bounce back,” senior center fielder Mikey Timinski said. “I mean, everybody deals with adversity. It all depends how you get back up from it. We excelled, so that’s what really mattered to our season.
“It helped us tremendously. That adversity set the tone for the rest of the season. As soon as it hits you, you either crack or you excel, and we excelled.”
There was a very close call in the district semifinals as JJ Rischawy’s walk-off single led to a 3-2 victory over Scranton Prep. The Mountaineers have dominated all three state opponents, outscoring them 26-4.
District 12 Archbishop Wood presented the biggest challenge in the state playoffs.
Dallas led 2-1 going into the fourth inning, but a six-run outburst pretty much decided the game. The 8-3 victory put the Mountaineers in the state finals for the second time in the program’s history. They brought home the Class 4A state championship in 2017, joining the 2008 Berwick squad as the only Wyoming Valley Conference teams to win a state title.
Friday will mark the final time in a Dallas uniform for five seniors who were major contributors this year — Timinski, right fielder Joey Peters, first baseman Shane Healey and pitchers Gary Weaver and Dusty Shaver.
“I don’t even think about playing our last game,” Peters said. “It’s just like we’re on the biggest stage in high school baseball. We’re just worried about winning that game.”
