The Northampton and Parkland baseball teams faced off Monday night at Mike Lisetski Field with the EPC West division title on the line.

The Trojans got out to a big lead and unlike in their previous meeting on March 21, the K-Kids were not able to stage a furious comeback as Parkland went home as 11-2 victors.

The key moment of the game occurred in the top of the fifth. Trailing 3-1 with 2 outs and runners on second and third, pitcher Owen Laury looked like he was going to get out of the jam when the Parkland batter took an abbreviated swing and missed at a 1-2 pitch.

As Laury walked off the mound, the plate umpire declared that the hitter had checked his swing. On the next pitch, the Trojans’ first baseman lined a single to right, plating both base runners. Parkland scored 3 more times in the inning to go up 8-1.

The Kids scratched out a run in the bottom half of the fifth to cut the lead to 8-2 but did not get any runners into scoring position in either the sixth or seventh innings.

Head coach Mick Sugra shared his thoughts after the game, “We went from potentially winning the West to potentially not even making EPCs. We shot ourselves in the foot today. We made 6 errors. I’m not going to point any fingers, they were the better team today.”

Logan Higgins was 2-4 with a run scored. Higgins leads the team in batting average (.426), hits (26), and runs (23). Dylan Fosko’s sac fly in the sixth inning gave him a team-leading 20 RBIs for the season. Gavin Pychinka is second on the team in both batting average (.425) and RBIs (18).

The loss dropped the Kids’ record to 11-7 overall and 9-6 in the EPC. Their final EPC game was Wednesday night against Whitehall. The result was not available by Press deadlines.

While Northampton has already clinched a district playoff berth, they are on the bubble for qualifying for the EPC tournament. Parkland, Liberty, and Nazareth have secured spots. As of this writing, Emmaus had 10 wins with 3 conference games left, including Allen.

The K-Kids are in a group of teams with 9 wins including Whitehall, Becahi, and PM East. Pleasant Valley and Freedom have enough EPC games left to get to 10 wins. The remaining 4 conference tournament bids will come from these 6 teams.

Northampton finishes up its regular season with a nonleague game against once-beaten Southern Lehigh on Saturday at home at 2:30. The EPC playoffs start next Thursday.