Mike Vukovcan WASHINGTON– Sports can be both exhilarating when you win and heartbreaking when you lose. Unfortunately for the Hopewell Vikings baseball program, today it was the latter.
For much of the today’s quarterfinal game against No. 2 seed Elizabeth Forward, Hopewell was the better team. However, sports can be cruel as the Vikings found out today.
Hopewell softball and youth baseball is sponsored by Lisa McCoy, your neighborhood State Farm agent.
Hopewell either led or were tied for 5 of the 7 innings but Elizabeth Forward took their first lead in the bottom of the sixth inning, and went on to defeat Hopewell, 4-3.
This was a difficult loss for the Vikings program and details about today’s game don’t really matter.
To me, the key stat of the game was that EF held Hopewell to just 1-hit. The bottom line is that it’s extremely difficult to win any game with just 1 hit.
All that aside, Hopewell competed hard and very well could’ve won but that’s not the way things turned out.
This team showed character today as they’ve done all season as evidenced by their record of 16-6.
The only positive from today is that this won’t be Hopewell’s last game of the season. Because they made it to the semifinals, Hopewell still has a chance to qualify for the PIAA playoffs.
Three teams from Class 4A qualify for the PIAA playoffs so next week, Hopewell will take on Derry in the WPIAL 3rd place game. The day and time of the game has yet to be determined but we do know that the game will be played at W&J College.
While their goal of winning a WPIAL championship is over, Hopewell still has the opportunity to compete in and win the PIAA Championship.
