Murrysville Senior Legion baseball team returns to District 31

After a one-year hiatus, the Murrysville Senior Legion team is back in business.

Coach Chas Brncic hopes the team assembled can produce winning results in its return to the District 31 league.

“I do feel this team can be competitive,” said Brncic, who coached the Murrysville Junior Legion team to the state tournament last season.

“We have some good pitching, so I know we are going to be in a lot of games. It will come down to if we also field the ball and score some runs. I am confident we will also do those things.”

Murrysville started it season 0-2 with a 4-2 loss to Young Township on May 25 and a 10-0 setback to Latrobe on May 28.

The team, Brncic said, continued to find its footing as it waited for the full-time participation of five members of the Franklin Regional varsity baseball team — Luke Treloar, Michael Klingensmith, Shane Sciorilli, Connor Helm and Mathew Fitzmaurice — who are still playing in the high school postseason.

Franklin Regional was to open the PIAA Class 5A tournament Monday.

“We haven’t had the full roster practice together because of the high school success and their extended season,” coach Brncic said.

At full strength, coach Brncic expects Treloar, Helm, Klingensmith and Sciorilli, along with Bronson Ianno, Jeff Downs, Trevor Brncic and Chris Pagano, to gobble up a majority of the innings on the mound.

He added that two or three other arms could see an inning or two.

Eight of the 17 players on the roster — Treloar, Downs, Brncic, Helm, Pagano, John White, Noah Sofran and Anderson Petrazzi — were part of last year’s Murrysville Junior League squad that took third at states. The team went 2-2, and its losses were to the finalists, West Lawn and Spring City.

Ianno was a member of the Murrysville Senior Legion team in 2017, while Daniel Dal Canton and Jack Hanlon were double rostered between the Junior and Senior Legion squads.

Dal Canton and Hanlon were older than the Junior Legion age limit last year, making them ineligible to return to the team.

The two had hoped to play for the Senior Legion team, but the squad never materialized because of a lack of enough players.

“It’s a relief and a great feeling because I really wanted to play baseball again with all my friends and be a part of the team,” Dal Canton said. “I was only a couple of months older (than the cut-off date). It was tough. But I guess that happens here and there.”

Max Kodat, a newcomer to the Murrysville area this year and a member of the Franklin Regional junior varsity team this spring, is in the Senior Legion mix.

Traynor Granatire, the only 19-year-old on the squad, recently completed his freshman baseball season at Chatham. He played for West Hempfield last year, but when that team folded, he made the move to Murrysville.

Tyler Waryas is new to the Murrysville Legion program.

“District 31 is always a strong league, and it will be interesting to see how we will fit into it,” coach Brncic said. “We have a lot of games to play before the end of the (regular) season.”

Murrysville already had games postponed against Derry and Kiski Valley, and a scheduled game Monday against Bushy Run was postponed because a majority of its players are members of the Penn-Trafford baseball team which is in the PIAA Class 6A tournament.

A game with Hempfield East on Wednesday was to be contested past the deadline for this week’s edition.

Murrysville is slated to take on Unity at 6 p.m. Thursday at Whitney Field in Unity Township.