Mike Vukovcan It’s time to announce our fourth Lisa McCoy Agency/State Farm Insurance Hopewell Player of the Week, for both baseball and softball.
The winner will receive a baseball or softball with their Player of the Week inscription on it, along with a gift card to Shulligan’s Sports Bar & Grille.
The winners will be selected from either the High School, Junior Varsity or Middle School program. These Player of the Week honors will all lead up to Vikings Sports Now announcing a Player of the Year in both sports.
Last week, our Week 3 winners were Hopewell freshman Lillian Otto and Hopewell seniors Ben McDonald and Drew Donovan.
This was another difficult decision considering the number of worthy candidates but after looking everything over, we’ve come up with our Week 4 winners.
We had at least 6 legitimate candidates for softball and couldn’t pick all 6, but we will select three.
Congratulations to Claire Sarkis, Abigail Babinsack and Kamryn Roche!
For the week, Sarkis hit .666 (8 for 12) with 3 runs scored, 3 RBI, which was all highlighted by her performance against Quaker Valley where she went 6 for 6!
Babinsack ended up batting .625 (5 for 8), with 4 RBI, 3 runs, walk.
Roche batted .571 with 3 runs, 2 walks and 4 RBI. Should also point out that this is Roche’s first season competing at the varsity level after missing all of last season with a wrist injury.
For baseball, our winner is going to be senior pitcher Payton Korker. This is going to Payton for another outstanding pitching performance this week along with the job he’s done on the mound all season for the Vikings.
HC Morgan Singletary came into the season knowing he had 2 top end pitchers in seniors Kingston Krotec and Ben McDonald. However, he along with the rest of the WPIAL has found out that Hopewell has 3 top end pitchers with the addition of Korker.
Korker has arguably been Hopewell’s most surprising performer this season as he’s put up ace like numbers.
On Friday against Serra Catholic, Korker was on a strict pitch count so that he could be available this week against Central Valley but was still able to go 4 innings, allowing only 3 hits, 1 ER and 5 Ks.
For the season, PK has pitched in 5 games, as Hopewell’s 3rd starter and check out these numbers:
Korker’s 5 Outings in 2026 for Hopewell:
Inning Pitched: 21.1
Hits Allowed: 12
Strikeouts: 18
ERA: 1.27
Once again, congratulations to Payton Korker, Claire Sarkis, Abigail Babinsack and Kamryn Roche, our Week 4 Vikings Sports Now Hopewell Baseball/Softball Players of the Week, sponsored by Lisa McCoy Agency/State Farm Insurance.Â
