As the summer keeps going, the PA Redhawks keep rolling along.

The 16-and-under travel baseball team has had an impressive run this season as it enters the WWBA National Wooden Bat Championship in Atlanta, which begins Tuesday.

Pool play of the tournament runs through Saturday, with Sunday and Monday used as playoffs, semifinals and finals.

"We seemed to have jelled well," said coach Rob Swartwout. "These kids all love baseball. They all want to play. No one just shows up.

"They worked out in the winter, even though they had other activities from school. (Manager) Jim (Revesz) has an indoor facility up there (The Hack Shack in Slippery Rock) and the kids were able to take ground balls and hit," Swartwout added.

The team has 15 players, 10 of whom played for Butler and Grove City high schools' varsity teams this year.

Nathan Bresnahan, Cody Herald, Tyler Slepski and Bobby Swartwout played for Butler High, which reached the WPIAL Class AAA semifinals this past spring.

Jason Revesz, Jeff Revesz, Alex Miklos, Gavin Herald, Camden Palmer and Jon Anderson played for Grove City, which qualified for the PIAA playoffs.

Sean White (Slippery Rock), Ryan O'Connor (Cranberry Township), Brayden McCorry (Moniteau) and Dane Gecina and John McCormick (Shenango) round out the rest of the roster.

Under manager Revesz, Swartwout is joined on the coaching staff by another Butler-area coach in Ben Herald, along with Mark White, Paul Gecina and Tim Herald.

Several years ago, Revesz coached Grove City Little League, Herald in East Butler and Swartwout in Butler Township and they crossed paths in youth tournaments.

"One thing we used to talk about was getting a travel team together," said Swartwout.

Flash forward to now, when the team has flourished so far in tournaments, which began June 12-14 with the Akron (Oh.) Tournament, which was made up of AAU or travel teams.

The Redhawks went 5-0 and 10-runned their opponents in three of the contests.

The following weekend, the Redhawks won the first two games at the Bellefonte Showdown, which was a wooden bat tournament, in State College before rain washed out the rest of the tournament. They defeated a team from Virginia twice that had a 25-0 record.

On July 2-5, the squad competed at the Beast of the East Tournament in Wheeling (W. Va.)., which had teams from West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Michigan and Canada.

"It's open to anyone who was there the previous year," said Swartwout. "They open it up in November. There were 300-plus teams total and the entire tournament is run in 10 days. It has a lot of college scouts who get to see the older kids.

"Once you get in it and you're a good team, they bring you back," Swartwout added.

The Redhawks went 7-1 to finish in second place, their lone loss to a Maryland team.

Butler's Swartwout, Herald and Bresnahan all homered for the Redhawks while Slepski, Swartwout and Herald pitched.

The team also took part in the Allegheny Tiger Invitational at Highfield Park this past weekend, but some players had other commitments, so the Redhawks pulled some other players in to get some competition.

Now, the Redhawks face their sternest test in Atlanta.

'This should be more fun," said Swartwout. "It should be low-scoring. You have to work runners over. We might score three or four runs a game.

"I talked to Jim and he told me there were 174 teams that are 16-and-under," said Swartwout.

"We're pretty excited. What will help us is the Penn State Tournament where we used the wooden bats. The field used wooden bats and the kids really seemed to enjoy that," he added.