Mike Vukovcan RACCOON TOWNSHIP– Hopewell/Team Hoffman and Riverside/Team Giles had the top two records in the regular season of the 2026 Beaver County Pony League.
Not surprisingly, both teams advanced in the ensuing playoffs and squared off tonight in the championship series. This is a Best of 3 series with Game One taking place in Raccoon Park (Hopewell’s home field).
Established in 1986, family owned and serving the Beaver County community for over 40 years. Serving breakfast favorites and lunch specials.
What an opening game as both teams had numerous chances to win as this game went to extra innings. In the end, it was Hopewell’s Tyler Hoffman coming through with a game-winning 2-out RBI single in the bottom of the ninth to give Hopewell a 4-3 win.
Game 2 and the possible championship clinching game will take place tomorrow night at Riverside.
From Hopewell’s perspective, the story of the game was the pitching performance particularly of Kruz Krotec, younger brother of Hopewell HS star pitcher Kingston Krotec.
Connor Reed got the start and after allowing 3 runs in the opening frame, came back to throw 2 shutout innings.
After that it was all Krotec, who pitched a masterpiece as he went the next 6 innings and blanked Riverside on 4 hits, walking none and striking out 5 batters.
How effective was Krotec? He threw 77 pitches in 6 innings and 60 of those were strikes.
For a 7th grader to do that in this type of pressure situation, pretty impressive stuff.
GAME-WINNING 9TH INNING:
Austin Gallagher led off the bottom of the night with a single to right field. Then with 2 outs, Connor Reed worked a 5-pitch walk to put runners at 1st and 2nd. Hoffman then came to the plate and as he’s done for much of the season, Tyler came up with a hit as he stroked a 1-0 pitch to center field, which scored Gallagher.
HOPEWELL REBOUNDS FROM 3-0 DEFICIT
Bottom of 1st: Hopewell immediately began to chip away at the deficit in their first at-bats of the game. Vin Smetana and Reed both reached base via Riverside errors. Smetana advanced to third base on Reed’s at-bat and then scored as Hoffman hit a sacrifice fly to right field. Riverside led 3-1.
Bottom of 2nd: The Vikings tacked on another run in the second inning. Krotec led off and reached base on catcher’s interference. Following a walk to Liam Rankin, both runners advanced on a ground ball out by Nico Yannessa. With runners at 2nd and 3rd and just 1 out, Krotec scored on a ground out by Gallagher. Riverside’s lead was cut to 3-2.
Bottom of 3rd: Hopewell then tied the game at 3 in the third. Smetana led off with a double to left field. With 1 out, Smetana moved over to third base on a groundout by Hoffman. Then with 2 outs, Smetana scored on a passed ball. Game was now tied at 3.
The rest of the game was dominated by pitching, particularly by Krotec and Reed. How dominant were they? After the 1st inning, Riverside didn’t have a runner advance to second base over the next 8 innings.
FINAL SCORE: HOPEWELL 4 RIVERSIDE 3 (9 INNINGS)
WINNING IS FUN!!
