Plum Youth Legion team comes back to reach state tourney

For the second straight game in the Pennsylvania Youth Legion Baseball Western Regional at Homer City, the Plum Youth Legion team rallied from an early five-run deficit.

The latest comeback, Tuesday evening in a 7-5 win over Westmoreland County league rival Uniontown, put the Post 980 Junior Mustangs in this weekend’s state tournament.

Plum, which improved to 21-4-1, won its third game in as many days since Saturday’s opening-round loss to Corry Post 365.

Plum, Corry and Uniontown have clinched the three state berths from the regional. All three are 3-1 in the tournament and will decide state seeding Wednesday.

Plum and Corry will rematch at 11 a.m. The winner then will take on Uniontown for the No. 1 seed from the regional.

The state tournament, also set for Homer City, will begin Saturday and run through July 31.

Nick Chirumbolo started for Plum. He walked six but surrendered just one hit through five innings and struck out three before giving way to Jimmy Rumcik.

Rumcik held Uniontown off the board over two innings, allowing no hits and striking out one to earn the win.

Only one of Uniontown’s five runs was earned. For the second game, Plum was able to overcome five errors.

Plum scored four runs in the fourth to pull within one at 5-4 and collected three more in the bottom of the sixth to take the lead. The Junior Mustangs collected seven hits. Christian Brown singled twice, and Brady Dojonovic, Alex Miller, Caden Norcutt, Colin Solinski and Anthony Carlisano added singles.

Chirumbolo, Dojonovic, Solinski, Brown and Carlisano each drove in a run.