What a wild evening for the Marian Catholic High School baseball team!

The Colts played at Pine Grove in a District 11 elimination game.First, the game was stopped because of a tornado warning. A police siren caused the team to flee to a local school building in anticipation of a potential twister.Then, when the team finally did make the trip home, the bus had to stop for coaches to remove fallen tree branches from the roadway; dropped power lines forced detours, and finally, some team members got back to broken windows on their vehicles from the catastrophic hail.The game started at 4 p.m. It was after 11 o'clock when the players got back to the school and witnessed the local damages.Jeff Nietz, Marian's head baseball coach, relayed the details of the harrowing night.During the baseball game, it was in the third inning when a bolt of lightning had the umpires suspend the game.There also was an announcement that a tornado warning was issued, with a possible twister being 20 minutes away.Nietz was told that if anything serious occurs, the team should go to the Pine Grove Middle School. The baseball team began getting onto the bus when a police car drove past. The officer bellowed over the cruiser's loudspeaker that everyone should "seek shelter immediately."The head coach remarked, "You could just literally see the black clouds swirling."He said the team members were very good about the situation and acted very responsibly.Nietz and trainer Mike Gallagher evacuated the team to the wrestling room of the middle school. There they were joined by the superintendent and athletic director of Pine Grove as well as Pine Grove's volleyball team.They remained there for about a half-hour when they were finally told they could leave. The game will resume at 5 p.m. today.The coach said they checked weather maps and saw the storm was taking a track up Interstate 81, so they decided to come home via Route 443. It was a ride, which is normally less than an hour, lasting three hours."There were trees and power lines down," he said, adding that at some points the bus stopped and he and the other coaches got off to clear brush so the trip home could continue.Near McKeansburg, there were power lines across the road, forcing the bus to turn around. The driver went into Schuylkill Haven, picked up Route 61, and proceeded to Pottsville before picking up I-81."I just never, ever saw anything like it," he said, adding that he was in the midst of a hail storm a number of years ago that caused widespread damages in Jim Thorpe mostly to buildings.On the bus, efforts were made to contact all the families of the team members to keep them abreast of the situation. In return, the players were told about the huge hail that fell in the Hometown area.Most of the parents were waiting for the team at Marian, where many of the players then saw that their cars sustained damages - including being riddled with dents and some broken windows.