The Freedom Patriots’ run through the Lehigh Valley High School Baseball Tournament brought some ups and downs. Saturday alone was a bit of a roller coaster as Freedom downed crosstown rival Liberty 8-4 to advance to the quarterfinals, only to run into another one of the tougher teams in the tournament in Emmaus.

Emmaus came into the game with two shutouts in a row and having allowed just five runs through their first four games. Unfortunately for the Patriots, Emmaus came up with more dominating pitching and downed Freedom 7-0.

In the win over Liberty, Conor Howland allowed three runs over six innings of work and the Freedom offense put together a balanced hitting attack. Against Emmaus, Andres Ledee got the start for Freedom.

Ledee set down the first five batters he faced before allowing a home run to Braden Waller, the opposing pitcher. Ledee got right back on track and got the next batter. An inning later, Ledee got the first out of the inning, but a defensive miscue put a runner on first for the Hornets. One out later, the Emmaus bats came alive and Wyatt Henseler delivered a three-run home run to left to make it a 4-0 game in favor of Emmaus. The hit attack kept coming and later in the inning, Jaden Gallagher delivered a two-run double to make it 6-0.

Freedom had a base runner in each of the first three innings, but couldn’t string together any hits to mount an attack. Waller then settled in and put down seven straight hitters, three of them on strikeouts to send the game to the bottom of the fifth.

Henseler again did some damage with a triple to right-center field with one out. Andrew O’Brien followed with an RBI single to stretch Emmaus’ lead to 7-0.

Freedom got a leadoff double from Howland in the sixth, but stranded him there when Waller again buckled down and put down the next three batters. Waller struck out Nick Stannard to open the seventh inning and exited after reaching his pitch count limit. Zane Cook came on and hit a batter and then launched a wild pitch to put a runner on second with one out. Like Waller had done, Cook then settled in to get the final two outs of the game.

“We had good pitching, but you have to tip your hat to them [Emmaus] because they were able to put up some runs against us. They also ran some good pitching out there,” said coach Nick D’Amico. “This was a good tournament for us though and the atmosphere was great. We had a nice run and it was good for the guys to get out on the field.”

Freedom went 2-1 in pool play, with their only blemish being a 9-2 loss to Liberty. With their 1-1 record in the playoffs, they finished 3-2, outscoring their opponents 30-23. As for Emmaus, they went on to win the tournament with a 7-3 win over Northampton in the semifinals and a 7-5 win over Parkland in the finals to finish a perfect 7-0.