AG baseball team provided many thrills under Rob, Shawn Chory
The postseason is a place that hasn’t been visited very often by Albert Gallatin High School, but two of AG’s teams were participating in state competition on Saturday and redefining school records. The Colonial wrestling team, headed by coach Duane Dupont, was boosted by John Ptak, who finished fifth in the Class AAA 160-pound division in the state championships held at Hershey. He ends his career as AG’s all-time leader in wrestling wins.
Albert Gallatin’s girls basketball team, under first-year coach Shea Fleenor, was eliminated by Mercyhurst Prep in the first round of the PIAA playoffs. It was the third time in four years the Lady Colonials have qualified for the state tournament, a feat no other program has matched at the school.
The AG girls have come up short in trying to equal a notable pair of school playoff records, though.
Both accomplishments are held by the Colonial baseball team, and with high school spring practice now in session, this seems a good time to revisit the year they occurred.
It was 1994 and AG had just made the baseball playoffs for the first time under coach Rob Chory by finishing second in Section 2-AAA to Connellsville. Their reward: a game against Mount Pleasant and pitcher Dan Stavisky.
What kind of challenge did Stavisky present to the Colonials? He had never lost a game in his entire high school career, going 21-0, and he had already earned a full baseball scholarship to Notre Dame.
Chory set Jimmy Cole, a fine pitcher in his own right, to the mound to face Stavisky. Cole did his best, allowing only two runs to the mighty Vikings in hurling a complete game.
Still, Mount Pleasant led 2-0 as the game, played at Southmoreland, entered the bottom of the sixth with AG’s bottom of the order coming up.
In an attempt to break Stavisky’s concentration, Chory gave No. 8 hitter, Jeff Kelley, a bit of advice.
“I just told him to crowd the plate, get right on top of it,” Chory recalled. “I told him to work hard to get on base. At that point, you try anything.
“And it worked.”
In fact, Chory’s ploy worked even better than he ever imagined.
Stavisky didn’t hit Kelley, but he walked him. At that point, Stavisky did something he rarely, if ever, did in his high school career. He lost his composure.
Stavisky walked No. 9 hitter Donnie Miller and lead-off batter Ben Lemansky to load the bases.
Now in a full-blown jam, the Mount Pleasant ace got a strikeout for the first out and looked to get out of the inning. But Colonial senior Craig Hoone wouldn’t let him off the hook so easy.
Hoone smashed a long drive off the top of the fence for a game-tying, two-run double. Stavisky actually caught a huge break on the play.
“The fence was higher in that spot than any other,” Chory said. “If Craig would’ve hit it anywhere else, it would’ve been a grand slam.”
With runners on second and third, Stavisky got the second out when a ground ball resulted in a fielder’s-choice out at home plate. Now almost out of the inning, the Fighting Irish recruit did the unimaginable: he balked, and the go-ahead run came prancing home.
“There wasn’t anything controversial about it,” Chory pointed out. “When he went into the stretch and put the ball into his glove, the ball popped out and fell on the ground, which is a balk by rule.”
Cole made sure the surprising 3-2 lead held by retiring the Vikings in order in the seventh, getting the final out with a strikeout to end one of the biggest upsets in WPIAL baseball playoff history.
Just to prove it wasn’t a fluke, the Colonials rolled over Chartiers Valley in the quarterfinals, 5-0, behind a complete-game, two-hitter by Hoone at, ironically, Mount Pleasant’s field.
“I remember Hoone just pitched a masterpiece and Elvis Matlick had three stolen bases to spark our offense,” Chory recalled.
That gave the Colonials the distinction of being the only team in Albert Gallatin history, since consolidation, to win two postseason games in the same season and reach the WPIAL semifinals.
Albert Gallatin faced another daunting task when it headed into the final four: a game against a North Allegheny team that was ranked fifth in the country by the USA Today and featured pitching ace Dan McCarthy, who would later be a third-round draft pick by the New York Mets.
Nothing would intimidate the Colonials at this point, however. They battled the Tigers tooth and nail before finally seeing their remarkable season come to an end at Riverview’s field with a narrow 6-5 defeat.
“That was just a fun season, with all that team did,” Chory said. “Obviously that was a special group of kids.”
Chory vacated the head coaching job three years ago, staying on as an assistant under his son, Shawn Chory. Both stepped down before the 2003 season, though, with Dan Palm now taking over.
Rob and Shawn took the time to recall several other memorable Albert Gallatin baseball moments they experienced.
Shawn reflected back three years ago to the 2000 season when he led the Colonials to the first section title by an AG boys team since consolidation by claiming the Section 2-AAA title. Albert Gallatin was 11-5 overall and 7-3 in a tight section race.
“Those seniors that year were just an excellent group,” said Shawn, who played for and served as an assistant under his dad. “In four years I had no complaints from any one of them, or their parents. I was close with that group, and it was nice to see it all come together for a lot of them that year.
“I remember the day we won the section we had a great game with Ringgold. We were up 3-2 going into the top of the seventh and Ringgold scored with two outs on a bloop single that our second baseman, C.J. Shimshock, dove and had in his glove and the ball bounced out.”
Shimshock almost redeemed himself in the bottom of the inning.
“He was on second base with two outs when Andy Patrick hit a liner that the pitcher stuck his glove up and caught,” Shawn said.
The Colonials had another shot in the bottom of the eighth when they put runners on first and second with no outs for Barry Lilley.
“I was thinking bunt, but Barry had been hot so I decided to just let him hit,” Shawn said.
Lilley blasted the first pitch over the center field fence for a game-winning, three-run homer.
“That was the most memorable game I coached,” Shawn said. “It was an emotional win, and we didn’t even find out that we clinched first place until later that day.”
“We did have another big win that year, though, against Laurel Highlands,” Rob pointed out. “We were down 8-0 and the game was suspended due to rain. We picked it up at that point at a later date and before we started again, Shawn told all the kids that we’re going to come back and win this game, and we did, 11-9. Matt Davis hit a three-run homer that put us in front for good.
“That was an emotional high for that team and a turning point for the season.”
Rob reminisced about another game the Colonials won, far from home.
“We played at Three Rivers Stadium in 1996-97 and 98, and went 2-1,” Rob recalled. “I remember in ’98 we were playing Woodland Hills. Well, I always tried to get every player into those games so they could get the experience of playing at a major-league ballpark. Woodland Hills was in a playoff race, though, and their coach told me before the game that the third tiebreaker was overall record and that he was worried about playoff seedings, too, so he had to play his starters the whole way and try to win the game.
“I said that’s fine with me. So we used nine different pitchers, got every one of our players in the game, and still won,” Rob said with a smile.
Both Rob and Shawn have the utmost respect for many of the coaches they’ve gone up against.
“Renzi, Landman, Edenfield, Popovich, Donley,” Shawn rattled off, “and there were others. I have the utmost respect for all of them. Bob Renzi at Connellsville is a tremendous coach. Mark Edenfield at Uniontown is one of the most competitive coaches I know. Tom Landman is a class guy at Laurel Highlands and always had good teams. Jay Donley at Mapletown is a good friend who’d always let us scrimmage them when we couldn’t find a game.”
“The best part about getting to know a lot of the coaches, especially the ones in our section, was finding out how much each of them loved the game of baseball, loved it as much as I do,” Rob said. “Obviously, Bob Renzi set the standard in our section and it was a big deal when we finally beat them for the first time. I remember Mark Dolan pitched for us when we beat Clint Weibl, who was an underclassmen then, in relief. That was a big hurdle for us. They were always the team to beat, and it was hard for us to convince our players they could play with that team until they finally did it.
“I think we’re the only section, too, that would sit down and meet face to face to pick our all-section team. We’d talk and hash it out and in the end it would come down to a vote in front of each other. That was a good development, a good way to do it, plus it was a good way to get to know all the other coaches. I always enjoyed that.”
So while Albert Gallatin’s baseball team may not have gotten the attention of other sports at the school, the program has earned its own niche in the school’s sports history during its time under Rob and Shawn Chory.
And given them plenty of happy stories to tell.
Rob Burchianti is assistant sports editor of the Herald-Standard and can be reached on line at rvburchianti@hotmail.com.