After helping the Salisbury High School varsity team to its best season in recent years, Falcon junior Austin Spisszak was recently selected to be part of this year’s Lehigh Valley Carpenter Cup baseball team.

The Carpenter Cup is a showcase tournament for high school players run by the Philadelphia Phillies. It brings together the top players from eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and Delaware on all-star teams to compete in front of college and pro scouts each year in south Philadelphia.

“It feels right to be a part of something like this,” said Spisszak before the tournament. “I am proud to be representing Salisbury High School in an event of this magnitude. I love competition, especially against the best in the area. I’m looking forward to seeing how far we can go in the tournament.”

Spisszak was the Falcons’ ace this season, posting a 1.40 ERA over 56.2 innings while striking out 53 batters. He was also one of the team’s top hitters as he played first base on days when he wasn’t pitching. He batted .316 in 2024 with 26 hits and 20 RBIs.

This past spring was his second year on the Falcon varsity team. As a sophomore Spisszak got in some games both at first base and on the mound, but this year he was the team’s top player at both positions.

By making the Carpenter Cup team, Spisszak follows in the footsteps of his father, Peter, who was a pitcher and outfield on a District 11 Championship team at Allen High School in 1995. Peter Spisszak also played on two Carpenter Cup teams and went on to a college career at Bloomsburg University.

“My dad is the reason why I started playing baseball,” Austin said. “He is a big reason why I have grown and been successful.”

During the pandemic, when schools were closed and teams were encouraged to social distance, Austin and Peter were outside everyday throwing a baseball.

Austin Spisszak is familiar with high level tournament and showcase baseball. As a member of the Lehigh Valley Prospects he faces some of the top teams and players in the region and beyond during the offseason.

Salisbury’s high school team, with Spisszak and a strong core of seniors, reached the league playoffs and district title game in 2024 for the first time in several years. Spisszak feels like that was just the beginning of the program returning to the elite status it once held in the Colonial League and District 11.

“I am proud of the team for what we accomplished this season,” he said. “But there is definitely room for improvement. In my mind the season had a lot of good things we can look back on, however, I am only looking forward to next year to be better as a team and continue to compete at a high level. The program has come really far under [head] coach [Justin] Aungst. We had a really good run this year and there were a lot of great memories that we will all have forever.”

Spisszak’s Salisbury classmate Owen Fogal was an alternate for this year’s Lehigh Valley Carpenter Cup team, which dropped its opening game Monday to Chester County, 7-2. Spisszak went 0-for-2 as Lehigh Valley had just five hits in the game. Chester scored 7 runs on 6 hits with only four of the runs being earned by LV pitchers as the team committed two errors.