The Northampton baseball team wrapped up its 2022 EPC slate on Monday with a Senior Night contest against visiting Allen. The Canaries were friskier than expected, but a pair of solo home runs by Vincent Santostefano helped deliver a 4-2 win.

After an 0-3 start to the season, the team has come back to post a 12-7 record with a game pending against District 3 Hamburg.

The K-Kids drew first blood in the bottom of the third inning. Logan Higgins led off with a single and stole second. He advanced to third on a Hunter Corrow single and came home on a 1-out sacrifice fly to right by Nate DaRoja.

They extended the lead in the fourth. Evan Hughes drew a 2-out walk and scored on a Higgins triple, his team-leading fourth of the season.

Santostefano pulled a 1-0 fastball over the left field fence for a leadoff home run in the bottom of the fifth to push the Northampton lead to 3.

Things got interesting in the top of the sixth. A leadoff walk turned into Allen’s first run when a 2-out fly ball was dropped in the outfield. The Canaries then got a double from cleanup hitter, catcher Aaron Schneider, to cut the margin to 3-2. Matt Merced struck out the next batter to end the threat.

Santostefano added an insurance run in the bottom of the inning when he clubbed a 2-out 2-2 fastball over the fence for his third homer of the year.

Higgins worked the seventh inning to pick up the save.

On the hill, Santostefano worked 4 innings, gave up 2 hits, no walks, and struck out 4.

The junior discussed his power surge, “This is the first year I’ve hit home runs. It’s a great feeling. When you don’t feel it hit the bat, which is what happened on these two home runs, I knew they were both out.”

The K-Kids finished with a 10-6 mark in the conference which earned them the number 7 seed in the EPC tournament. They will play at second-seeded Parkland this evening at 4:45 p.m. The Trojans won both regular season meetings, 11-6 on March 29 and 10-5 on May 3.

The winner will advance to the semifinals on Monday at DeSales University to face the winner of Emmaus and Pleasant Valley at 4 p.m. The final is next Thursday.

Head coach Mick Sugra described the team’s postseason prospects, “You get in, you have a chance. We have Hunter (Corrow) throwing, so we score a couple of runs and he does what he’s been doing, I’ll take our chances against anybody.” He added, “We haven’t had many big innings. It’s just been 3, 4, 5 run games and pitching. If we put 5 runs on the board and Hunter’s throwing, I give ourselves a chance.”