Final phase
Encapera guides Roaring Lions into penultimate baseball season
Penn State Fayette kicks off its penultimate baseball season on Saturday and head coach Ryan Encapera has one main goal in mind as the school’s closing looms after the 2026-27 school year.
“It’s a difficult time at Fayette and I’m trying to keep everything in line and keep everybody together,” Encapera said. “I take a lot of pride in the baseball in Fayette County with the County League and the tradition that Fayette Campus has had. It’s really sad that it’s going to go away.
“But we want to go out on a positive note and give our guys a good college baseball experience. I feel we’ve been able to do that whether we won or lost since I’ve been there, and hopefully we can keep that up two more seasons.”
Encapera, entering his fifth season as head coach and seventh with the program overall, was determined to build his team back up after a rare disappointing season in which Fayette was 4-34 overall and 2-18 in the PSUAC.
He feels he’s done that.
“I brought in 11 new players last summer knowing after August 2025 I was limited to recruiting players who were on campus and I got a nice group,” Encapera said. “I had seven who played last year that were returners and two others were on the team but were injured and couldn’t play last season. We have 20 guys and it’s a pretty decent looking roster at this point.”
Encapera sees last year as a season where whatever could go wrong did.
“We’ve been good pretty much every year except for last year,” Encapera said. “What was weird was that team had a lot returning from the year before from a team that was right on the cusp of the playoffs. We took some tough losses. A lot of things didn’t go our way. It was a difficult year.
“But our fall was good and we’ve got some pretty good athletic players that are really going to make us much better. I really feel we’ve improved a lot. Our morale is there. The challenge for us is we have a lot of young players who are new to college baseball and our job is to get them adjusted.”
The Roaring Lions face Christendom out of Virginia in their first three games with a doubleheader Saturday and a single game on Sunday, all at Mylan Park in Morgantown.
Fayette will follow that up with a six-game trip to South Florida in the Palm Beach Challenge at Santaluces Complex in Lantana. Roaring Lions opponents will be Atlantis University, Mellenia Atlantic University, Daytona Beach Christian and Florida National University, all of which, like Fayette, are USCAA teams.
The Roaring Lion then come back to Pennsylvania and play a six-game Eastern Pa. trip against three more USCAA squads: Manor College, Bucks County Community College and Central Penn.
Conference play begins on March 27 with a doubleheader at Penn State DuBois.
One of the key returning players for the Roaring Lions is catcher Frank Macioce out of Plum.
“Frank was kind of in a tough spot last year because we only had two primary catchers and he caught probably 80 percent of the games,” Encapera pointed out. “He’s kind of the heart and soul of our team, the guy everybody looks to. He’s almost like another coach.
“The same with outfielders Manny Stitch (Serra Catholic) and Jimmy Knapton (South Allegheny), those guys are third-year players here for me and they know what I expect as a coach. It’s good having guys like that because they echo everything I want our guys to do and they’re good, solid people.”
Fayette’s pitching staff will be led by Brandon Bieler (Souderton) and two Ringgold graduates, Remington Lessman and Ashton Ray, who pitched 25 innings in 10 games in 2025.
Adding depth to the pitching staff are Tyler Marra (Notre Dame, W.Va.), Brogan Meighen (McGuffey), Josh Hammer (Canton Central Catholic, Ohio), Josh Vacha (Latrobe) and Todd Kowalcyk (Phillipsburg-Osceola).
The two players returning from injuries are first baseman/pitcher AJ Segarra (Mt. Lebanon) and catcher Hunter Smiley (Uniontown). Encapera is counting on Segarra to provide power at the plate and consistency on the mound. He views Smiley as a good contact hitter with defensive versatility.
Among the newcomers are Connor Perry (Bald Eagle) and Alex Weber (Shaler) who Encapera said will “inject the lineup with athleticism and consistent hitting.”
Other first-year players, who will all get opportunities to contribute, according to Encapera, are Lucas Vilchez (Matewan, N.J.), Josh Gonzalez (Bishop McDevitt) , Johnathan Vasbinder (Brownsville), Jadyn Reese (Morgan, Ohio) and Brayden Chambers (Gateway).
“I do have a new coaching staff this year,” Encapera said. “Greg Beucher from Connellsville who used to play shortstop at Cal U is our hitting and infield coach. Our pitching coach is Ryan Novotney who is from Brownsville and also played a little bit at Cal U.
“We also have on our staff working with the outfielders, I call him the energy coach, that’s Dennis Stitch who is from Charleroi. His son Manny is on our team. He was a Hall of Famer at Pitt, played back in the 70s. He’s just a real positive personality who gets our guys motivated. He’s a good guy to have around to try to mentor our players and help them go from boys to men.”
The Roaring Lions will compete in a six-team conference that also includes Penn State branch campuses from DuBois, Greater Allegheny, Beaver, Shenango and New Kensington.
“I would say, based on who they had in the past, Dubois, Shenango and Greater Allegheny are the top teams,” Encapera said. “Dubois, they’re always tough but they’re closing and so is Shenango which had some very talented players. Great Allegheny is a rival of ours at McKeesport and those guys have a solid program as well.
“New Ken had a decent team but they had a coaching change and lost a lot of their guys. Beaver will probably be about the same.”
The conference scheduling format puts a strain on pitching staffs.
“It’s a challenge because our conference plays four-game series (two consecutive days of doubleheaders) so you really have to have pitching depth,” Encapera said. “It’s a grind.
“But I feel we have a good, solid team. We’ll compete.”
Encapera noted you can watch the Roaring Lions play on the web.
“Our games are live streamed on FAN (Fayette Athletics Network) with Don Bell and Josh Scully,” Encapera said.
You can find a link to FAN on the Penn State Fayette athletics website (psfathletics.com).