Salisbury knew what it would take on Sunday. A solid 14 innings of baseball and victories in both games of a doubleheader against Coplay would give the Falcons the regular season Lehigh Valley Legion championship.

The Falcons would needed a little more than 14 innings. After a convincing 8-1 victory in the first game on Sunday, Salisbury needed extra innings to get the job done in the night cap. But the Falcons were able to come from behind and secure the 4-3 victory in nine innings at Salisbury High School.

The win not only awarded Salisbury the regular season crown, but it also came with an automatic berth in the regional tournament that begins on July 15.

“Regionals is a huge step for Salisbury,” said junior outfielder Ryan Miller, who came up with the game-winning RBI-single. “We made it to states last year for Connie Mack with basically all of these players. Now, with these players we’re making it to regionals in legion. It’s pretty special.”

The last time Salisbury made it to regionals was in 2013, the last season head coach Scott Heppenheimer was leading the charge. But in that year, the Falcons didn’t win the regular season or league tournament.

As far as Heppenheimer’s knowledge, Sunday marked the first time since the 1980s that Salisbury won the legion regular season.

Pete Dubois led off the ninth inning with a walk to get the rally started. Then, Joey Galantini hustled down the first base line and reached base on a Coplay error. Nino Encarnacion was intentionally walked two batters later, setting up the Falcons’ only legion all-star starter with an opportunity to become the hero.

Miller didn’t disappoint. He connected on an opposite field hit into right field that scored pinch runner Lucas Irwin to make history for the blue and white.

“My last at-bat I kind of struggled,” Miller said. “I had an opportunity to score the person from third, but I messed up. This next one, I just knew instead of trying to hit a bomb, I just figured I needed to get the ball in play somehow. I knew the bases were loaded, so a base hit was going to score someone no matter what.”

“I kind of knew he was going to hit something hard,” Heppenheimer said. “He had a little bit of a tough day. His average in the league this year is around .395 or .400. The odds were with him.”

Other than a sloppy third inning in which Coplay scored all three of its runs, two on wild pitches from pitcher Andrew Sukanick, the incoming senior was his normal dominant self. He got out of a fourth inning that saw three Falcon errors without giving up a run en route to his seven-inning, five-hit performance.

Will Rodriguez came into the game and pitched the final two innings. Irwin got the win against Coplay in the opener, and Sukanick came in to pitch the final innings of that one as well.

“Andrew Sukanick is a horse,” Heppenheimer said. “He wouldn’t let me take him out of the game. He is 8-0 with a save. He’s been pretty much the glue of our pitching staff. You throw him out there any game and you have a chance to win, regardless of who we’re playing.”

After going down 3-1 in the third inning, Encarnacion’s solo home run off the left field foul pole got Salisbury within a run. Kevin Cruz then put the ball in play with runners on second and third. Miller raced home and Coplay couldn’t field the ball cleanly at the plate for the all-important second out of the inning.

Despite qualifying for unfamiliar territory, Heppenheimer knows his team must improve to compete at that next level.

“You saw how tight we were,” Heppenheimer said. “Routine ground balls to the second baseman. And we had some bad at-bats. We need to play a lot better in regionals because we are going to see some serious pitching and stuff.”

Before regionals, Salisbury will compete in the legion playoffs this week. The top-seeded Falcons open the Lehigh Valley Legion playoff tournament against the loser of the No. 7 and No. 10 seed matchup.