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Racking Up Banners
ON THE INSIDE The lastest happenings in our area Page 2
November 13, 2015
by Dave Lauriha
SPECIAL TO THE VALLEY ADVANTAGE
It took a long time for Archbald to claim its first Little League banner, which signifies a district or sectional title. For an organization that gained its Little League charter in 1947, Archbald seems intent on making up for lost time. Since the organization captured its first banner in 2010, Archbald has garnered 13 other banners over the last five years, according to outgoing president Tom Kovalchik. He’s the one who had to find a way to get them all lined up for a photo, and, he discovered, 14 banners take up a lot of space. Since winning the City-County tournament in 2010, Archbald has captured District 32 titles in the 11- and 12-year-old age group four times in the last five years, the last three CityCounty tournaments for 11- and 12-year olds, two 9- and 10-year-olds district titles, the last two district titles for 10- and 11-year-olds and saw its first girls district champions also claim a sectional title. this for 9- and 10-year-olds. “That is basically attributed to four guys [George Black, Butch Castellani, Jack McHale and Dave Stafursky] whom I got to know in recent years, who were committed to developing players, developing the league, to go down a path to be successful and make baseball players out of these kids,” Kovalchik said. Making players of kids comes with proper preparation, a lot of sweat, even more hard work and the result is a confident team of players ready to perform. Developing the league was a little bit more difficult. Kovalchik, who was a board member for two years before assuming the president’s job for 2014 and 2015, pointed out that it is a much different road than had been the case for the first 60 years since getting its charter. “Archbald had been playing other Archbald teams, and you would get four or five teams and they would play each other two or three times a year, and not expand out,” Kovalchik said. “What these guys did was expand it out.”
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Archbald Little Leaguers show off the many banners the teams have won in the last few years.
Archbald joined the Mid Valley League, which allowed the team to play the best teams from Green Ridge and Jefferson Township, as well as teams from the valley. Two years ago, Kovalchik said that a change in the Little League rules, which now allowed players to play for a team in their school district rather than from a particular town, left Archbald looking for another league to play in, and came up with the Pioneer League. Other school districts in the Pioneer League include Carbondale Area, Lakeland and Western Wayne. Going from playing just teams from Archbald to seeing the best of other area towns helped the Archbald players to improve dramatically. It allowed the players and coaches to have a better idea of what they had to do to keep up with or get ahead of other areas, and Archbald has done just that.
The run of district titles has seen plenty of kids share in the success Archbald has achieved over the recent years. Three of them — Ryan Cesarini, Duke Stafursky and Zack Kovalchik — were part of four District 32 championship teams, winning in the 9- and 10-year old age group in 2012 and 2013, and in the 11- and 12-year old age group in 2014 and 2015. “The kids were willing to learn and work hard on the fundamental aspects of the baseball,” Kovalchik said. “The four guys I mentioned were the key guys, but there are other coaches, so many coaches who have seen the process and how it works, and how important it is to develop players.” What Archbald has done is impressive, and it makes them the team every opponent they face will want to defeat the most. It wasn’t that way for a long time.