Photo by Becky Polaski Denny Haberberger, American Legion Region 8 State Director, center, is pictured with sectional directors George Hetrick and Don Powell during the recent Region 8 tournament held at Berwind Park.

Haberberger has held the position of American Legion Region 8 State Director since the mid-1990s. He oversees teams in an area spanning Butler County, Clarion County, Crawford-Venango counties, Elk County, Erie County, Mercer-Lawrence counties and Warren County.

Haberberger added that there are a number of sectional directors that help with the program.

"They are sort of the middle men between me and the managers. We just make sure everybody is going by the rules. We have a lot of paperwork that's involved in the program. Each manager does that. It gets submitted to the sectional director and then it comes to me. I verify it, then it goes to Harrisburg, and then it goes to the national organization in Indianapolis, Ind.," Haberberger said.

According to Haberberger, one of the biggest challenges involved with being a regional director for the American Legion baseball program is putting on tournaments, such as the Region 8 tournament which was held at Berwind Park in St. Marys last week.

"There are a lot of people that put a lot of work into the tournament and St. Marys this year did an excellent job," Haberberger said. "This is probably one of the best ones we ever had. There were a lot of dedicated people that came out and helped us."

In particular, Haberberger noted that the time limit set for each tournament presents problems in the event of inclement weather.

"You have a time limit. You start on Saturday and you've got until Wednesday to be finished. I [had Thursday if I needed it], but that's it. If it would have [happened that we would have gotten a lot of rain] we would have been playing around the clock, 2 or 3 in the morning, whatever we had to do including using other fields. I can remember back a few years ago we had a tournament up in Mt. Jewett and it rained so bad that we ended up bringing it [to St. Marys] to finish it," Haberberger said.

Each year the tournament moves throughout the region depending on which community requests to host it.

"What they do is they submit to me that they would like to host the tournament. They have to put up a $500 guarantee and then sign a contract. We try to move it around. Next year it will be going to Saegertown. Last year we were in Erie. A lot of people don't want the hassle because it is a lot of work and you have to have dedicated people to do it. We're fortunate here. We will take this tournament every chance we get. We like to do it and we like to bring baseball to the town," Haberberger said.

Haberberger remarked that there was a good turnout for this year's tournament, though he added that he was disappointed in the size of the crowd during some of Fox Township and St. Marys' games.

"I was disappointed when Fox Township played their last game. There weren't many [supporters] there. [The other night] St. Marys was playing and there were not many people there either. The first couple days we had good crowds. With the weekend too a lot of people traveled over here. There are good ball players here and people just don't come out and support the Legion program. We don't know what it is. I know Little League played the other night so there might have been some people there that would have been here, but we've still had a good turnout," Haberberger said.

The winner of each regional tournament advances to the state tournament, which is being held this week in Boyertown. The tournament is a double elimination format and consists of the top team from each of the seven regions along with the host team. Millcreek is the Region 8 representative.

"What's nice about Pennsylvania is with us being so big we get to send our top two teams to a national regional," Haberberger said.

Winners of a national regional advance on to Spokane, Wash. for the world series.

Haberberger added that he would like to see the state tournament held in St. Marys in the near future.

"I'd like to [host it here again]. We had a lot of good people that helped us put it on before. We'd have to do some work to the field to get it ready. It wouldn't take much. They always want to come back here. They love it up in this area. It's something we'll be looking at but you want to make sure you do one when St. Marys has a good team, that way they can stay in it longer. This year would have been a good year but that thing is booked three or four years in advance," Haberberger said.

Haberberger remarked that there are a lot of talented baseball players that come out of area programs and he noted that five players from Elk County recently had the opportunity to compete at Metro Bank Park in Harrisburg as part of this year's All-West Team.

He added that the county tryouts for the team were open to all players and followed a different format this year than in year's past.

"We opened it up so that anybody that wants to try out can try out. It is conducted by my staff, some coaches, some scouts and so forth. Every kid runs a 60-yard dash. All the outfielders through from center field. Infielders throw from behind third. First basemen throw across to third. Catchers throw from behind home and they're timed until the ball gets to second. A lot of it is based on your speed and how hard you can throw a baseball," Haberberger said.

Players that make it past the first round go on to compete in the Region 8 final and those that make it through that round go on to the All-West game.

"At every level it gets tougher. Here we selected 58, then it went to 29 and [in the last round] they selected 20 players," Haberberger said.

Out of those 20 players, five were from Elk County. Players from the St. Marys American Legion baseball team included Lucas Nicklas, Ryan Uhl and Jordan Weinzierl and players from the Fox Township American Legion baseball team were Jess Cogan and Justin Quiggle.

"All this is going to do is help them get looked at by college coaches and maybe get them some scholarships and get them in school. That way mom and dad don't have the burden of putting them through school," Haberberger said.

This year's East-West game was played on Sunday, July 25.

According to Haberberger, the regional directors will hold their next meeting in October in Harrisburg and will discuss potential changes for the future, including the possibility of switching to wooden bats.

"We might look at some different rules. There's always talk about going back to the wooden bat. That could be a possibility. We'll see what they want to do. The only thing is to go back to wood is going to cost the teams a lot of money to get up and started," Haberberger said.

Haberberger grew up playing Knothole Baseball and also used to run the Knothole program. He went on to coach the St. Marys American Legion baseball team starting in 1983 and the St. Marys Area High School baseball team starting in 1984.

"We won the district title in high school baseball and then I got out of it because I was just getting burned out because you'd go from one to the other and it's really tough. I continued with the Legion and then turned the Legion program over to Fran Pasi, who was my assistant ever since I started coaching, and Fran is still doing it to this day. My last couple of years being the manager I was also the sectional director and from that point the regional director sort of got out of the program so I took his place," Haberberger said.

Though Haberberger's role with various area programs has changed over the years his love of both the sport and coaching has not.

"I like to coach kids. I like to see them move on. I like to see them get better. Then when I got to this level I like to see a kid get to college because there isn't a year that goes by where I don't get letters from two or three different players thanking me for getting them into school or whatever. That's what it's all about. I have a lot of kids come to me and say 'coach those were the best days of my life when I played Legion baseball,' Haberberger said.

"I like all sports, but baseball is the number one sport. It makes my job nice when you've got good guys to work with too, especially here, because we've got a good bunch of people that help out a lot. It's a good program."