By CHUCK POLLOCK, Wellsville Sun Senior Sports Columnist
It’s been 24 years since I spent any appreciable time watching the College World Series.
That was June of 2002 when Port Allegany’s Brian Stavisky led Notre Dame into the nation’s final eight in Omaha as a hard-hitting first baseman/outfielder.
These days, Brian is a 45-year-old Director of Athletic Compliance at St. Bonaventure, 16 seasons removed from a distinguished nine-year career in minor-league baseball.
It never occurred to me that this month I would have another reason to pay rapt attention to college baseball’s premier event, thanks to another local star.
This time it was Portville’s Maxx Yehl (pronounced “Yale”), a 6-foot-6, 235-pound left-handed pitcher who was the ace of West Virginia’s staff as a redshirt junior (9-3 record, 2.13 earned-run average, 112 strikeouts in only 97 innings) after missing the 2025 season due to injury.
It wasn’t an unusual role for Yehl who was one of Western New York’s most impressive scholastic players for Mike Matz’s Portville team. As a junior, incredibly, Yehl never allowed a single run for the whole season and his senior year he fanned 106 batters in 45 innings, over two per frame.
In West Virginia’s first-ever trip to the College World Series, the Mountaineers opened with a 7-5 victory over Troy in the double-elimination event. Yehl got the start in Game 2 against North Carolina and after surrendering two tainted early runs, he pitched a gem until the seventh when both his second and third basemen made errors leading to three unearned runs. WVU fell 5-2.
I watched every pitch and was taken back to Brian Stavisky’s World Series in 2002 and with him being a position player for a team that had three games, his parents, Dan and Mary, got plenty of TV time.
Maxx’s only appearance was in Game 2 but his seven strong innings gave his parents — Chris and Kristin — some coveted television exposure.
The only question is whether Yehl, given his surgical history, will return to WVU for his senior season.
There are “experts” who predict he could be a fifth-rounder in the Major League Baseball Draft … possibly higher.
And a pro contract could look mighty good to him at age 22.
(Chuck Pollock, a Wellsville Sun and Olean Star senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@wnynet.net.)
