BUTLER TWP — The Butler Township Federation PONY team is on course to have an amazing season.

So good, in fact, they don't want to leave anything to chance.

The 14-year-old team, made up of incoming Butler High School students, has qualified for the PONY World Series Zone Tournament this weekend in McCandless — twice.

On Tuesday, the team wrapped up the North Hills Federation League playoffs with a championship crown, winning 21-8 and sweeping the three games they played.

At last weekend's PONY World Series Section Tournament in Cranberry Township, Butler Township routed all four of its opponents, rolling past Ellwood City 11-3, Johnstown DHL 18-0, New Castle 16-2 and Cranberry Township 17-6.

A win in either the postseason tournament or the section tournament would have given the team a zone tournament berth.

All this came after the team had won the North Hills Federation regular-season Section 1 title with a 20-2 record.

For the most part, this team played together as a group last year, going 18-4 in the process, so the familiarity among the players has been beneficial this season.

"Basically, when I would put a team together, I wanted my No. 1 goal to help build the Butler (High School) baseball program," said Butler Township manager Rob Swartwout.

"I got together with (coach) Ben Herald from East Butler and looked for who'd we like to have on a team. ... After last season, we played fall ball and now we have them here this year,"Swartwout added.

George Rader rounds out the team's coaching staff.

The team's starting lineup is solid from top to bottom — Bobby Swartwout (.622), Cody Wheeler (.538), Cody Herald (.500), Nathan Bresnahan (.374), Tyler Selepski (.507), Zach Rader (.514), Kyle Carson (.425), Chase Rodgers (.338) and David Hohn (.229, but a tremendous center fielder, according to Swartwout.)

Rounding out the roster is Jace Lyons (.293), Vinny Schmidt (.361), Jordon Allen (.347) and Shane Peters.

These averages were before Tuesday's win, during which Butler Township trailed 7-0 and tallied just one run over the first four innings before batting around the lineup three times in the fifth.

"We hit the ball real well and play good defense, but we've got a lot of good pitchers," said Swartwout.

Bobby Swartwout leads the team with a 1.12 ERA and usually closes the games. Carson (3.16), Schmidt (4.14), Selepski (4.29), Wheeler (5.37), Herald (6.83), Bresnahan (7.16) and Hohn (7.88) round out the pitching staff.

"A few of those (ERAs) are high, but when you don't pitch a lot of innings, one bad inning can affect those numbers," said Swartwout.

"Our top seven pitchers have thrown between 23 and 31 innings. I'm a big believer when you get to 70 pitches, you get them out of there. We want these kids to all go on and pitch in high school," Swartwout added.

Swartwout usually uses three pitchers per game with the first two tossing about two to three innings each.

Now, the team will join five other section winners at the PONY World Series Zone playoffs with the winner going on to the PONY League World Series in Washington, Pa.