With ‘eye on the prize,’ Kutztown Cougars hold on for big win at Twin Valley
His Kutztown teammates call him “Matty Ice” because he’s cool under pressure but Matt Remick admits the situation got to him a little in the final inning Tuesday at Twin Valley when the Raiders had the tying and go-ahead runners in scoring position.
“That was a little bit of a blur,” said the senior right-hander of the jam he escaped to secure the Cougars’ 8-7 non-league victory, their sixth win in a row.
Twin Valley, the Berks II preseason favorite, came from five runs back and tied it in the sixth. The Raiders’ first two batters in the seventh reached, on a walk and an error. A bunt moved them into scoring position.
Remick, who came in from shortstop in the fifth, made the biggest pitch of the game when he got Raiders leadoff batter Ben Vaughn to hit a comebacker for the second out. Caught up in the excitement of the moment he couldn’t recall what he threw in that spot.
“I’m not sure what it was,” he admitted. “I’m just glad it worked.”
Remick fell to his knees in front of the mound after he got the next batter to end it and the Cougars (7-2) celebrated as if they had just won a postseason game.
In a way, they did. They knocked off a much bigger school on the road and, though they may not have realized it at the moment, moved into the No. 1 spot in the District 3 Class 2A power ratings.
“Twin Valley’s a great (program),” said Kutztown catcher Nick Hugo, who doubled, homered and drove in five runs. “It’s a big school. It’s awesome as a 2A coming out here and playing with the big dogs. We’re beating big schools. We’re hanging with the big dogs so far. We’ve just gotta keep our eye on the prize and we’ll be good.”
The “prize” would be a district championship, something the Cougars haven’t won since 2019. They were knocked out in the second round each of the past two seasons.
They’ve got a solid club now, with veteran leadership – Hugo, Remick and Dalton Furst were all-division picks as juniors – and a chance for a couple prizes. They were the preseason favorite in Berks IV where they’re 2-0 and a game up on Brandywine Heights, their top competition for that title. They’ll meet Monday for the first time.
The win over the Raiders (2-5) was big for a lot of reasons. Their pitching staff is thin right now, with a couple of top arms unable to go. Coach Tim Mertz handed the ball to Chris Bergstrom for the first time and the freshman right-hander held his own and gave the Cougars a chance to win.
Couple that with the competition – the Raiders were throwing their current No. 1 starter, Owen Rhoads – and the fact that the Cougars responded to Twin Valley’s rally by scoring the go-ahead run in the seventh and you can understand why the Kutztown coach was nearly as excited as his players after the final out.
“That’s big for us,” Mertz said of the win. “Understanding the young guys I have out there, what we’re doing it with, it says a lot. We just kept battling.”
The Cougars haven’t had a lot of close games lately. They beat Northwestern Lehigh 10-1 to start the current winning streak and 10-runned Hamburg and Antietam for two league crossover victories. They had outscored their last five opponents 52-6; all but Delone Catholic are bigger schools.
Mertz was happy to see how his team responded in a tight game.
The Raiders scored three two-out runs, all set up by a throwing error, in the four-run fifth to pull within 7-6. They tied it the next inning on Kannon Zdimal’s two-out single.
The Cougars got that run back in the seventh when Hugo and Colin Hamm delivered one-out singles and Dom Pizzelanti reached on an error. Sophomore Colin Diehl’s sacrifice fly to center snapped the tie.
The Raiders’ threatened in the seventh but Remick dug in.
“I’m just trusting my boys behind me (in that situation),” he said. “I know that they’re gonna make the plays behind me, because we’ve got a tight-knit group. I was just trying to get soft contact, give us a chance to keep coming through and win a ballgame.”
“He stuck with it,” said Hugo, his catcher. “He was able to throw a good pitch and got the soft bouncer back to him. I’m proud of him, real proud.”
The loss was stinging to the Raiders, who battled back from a 7-2 deficit. They seemed to have all the momentum when left fielder Josh Zolty ended the sixth by throwing out Remick at the plate after he tried to score from second on Furst’s single. Twin Valley scored in the bottom half to tie it but their fifth error greased the skids for the game-deciding run.
“This one hurts,” said Twin Valley coach Corey Schnoke. “We come all the way back and tie it like that. We have the tying run, the go-ahead run on second and third with one out; we think we’re in business there.”
Both teams had miscues and gave away runs but the four unearned runs in the Twin Valley book were too many.
“We kept giving ’em outs,” said Schmoke. “That’s been our achilles heel all year. We continue to give outs away in big spots, and it hurts us. We continue to shoot ourselves in the foot. They probably should’ve scored five runs and not eight.”
Other than the throwing error that led to three unearned runs in the fifth the Cougars played a solid game. They looked like a team with confidence and momentum.
“We took two losses early that we really were disappointed with,” Hugo said of losses to Blue Mountain and Oley Valley the first week of the season. “We don’t think that there’s a team that we play that we can’t beat. We compete in every game. I can’t be more proud of these guys. I think we have a chance to go far.”
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| Kutztown | 2 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | – | 8 | 8 | 3 |
| Twin Valley | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 0 | – | 7 | 6 | 5 |
| Cougars (7-2) | AB | R | H | RBI | Raiders (2-5) | AB | R | H | RBI | ||
| Remick, ss/p | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Vaughan, 2b/p | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Schuler, 3b | 4 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Zolty, lf | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Furst, lf | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Rhoads, p/ss | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | ||
| Schaefer, dh | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Ka. Zdimal, dh | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | ||
| Bergstrom, p/ss | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Eden, rf | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Mathias, rf | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Goebel, c | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Hugo, c | 4 | 1 | 2 | 5 | Colombo, 1b | 4 | 0 | 1 | 2 | ||
| Gilbert, cr | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Cieless, 3b | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Hamm, 1b | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | Spiri, cf | 3 | 0 | 2 | 2 | ||
| Pizzelanti, 2b | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Ko. Zdimal, ss/2b | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Diehl, rf/p | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| Dunn cf | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||||||
| Totals | 30 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 27 | 7 | 6 | 5 |
E:Schuler, Remick; Rhoads 2, Eden,Cieless, Zolty. 2B: Hugo; Colombo, Spiri. HR: Hugo. SB: Remick; Rhoads. CS: Pizzelanti. LOB: Kutztown 7, Twin Valley 10.:
| IP | H | R | ER | BB | K | IP | H | R | ER | BB | K | |||
| Bergstrom | 3 2/3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 5 | Rhoads | 3 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 4 | |
| Diehl | 1/3 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 0 | Vaughn, L | 4 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 | |
| Remick, W | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
WP:Diehl, Bergstrom; Vaughn. HBP: Goebel (by Remick).
