In Sunday’s District 20 majors (12U) all-star elimination game, Lehigh’s Coltin Brozino and North Bethlehem’s Joey Raneiri turned the Little League showdown into a pitchers’ duel, but it was Lehigh who survived to see another game with a 3-0 victory on July 2 at North Bethlehem.

“We all know, in Little League, you can never have enough runs, so we knew we had to go back out the next inning and keep pitching strikes and play good defense,” said Lehigh manager Mark Pavlish. “These guys were giving us a dog fight here. The pressure was still on.”

Mason Marisofski’s RBI single scored Paxton Pavlish to give Lehigh a 1-0 lead in the first inning, but that’s where the score remained for four more innings.

“It was a fastball right down the middle,” Marisofski said. “I was getting nervous. I wasn’t ready for that (close of a game).”

Raneiri delivered strikeouts to open and close the inning and forced three straight ground outs in the second, two fielded flawlessly by second baseman Jayden Brujan.

Brozino then struck out all three North Bethlehem batters in the bottom of the second.

“I usually throw a fastball, curveball, and my fastball was on today, and they just could not hit it,” Brozino said. “I was feeling very good.”

In the top of the fourth inning, Marisofski had his second base hit, but Brujan fielded another grounder to end the threat.

“Beautiful stuff,” said Hutchinson. “We had it.”

In the bottom of the fourth, Brozino gave up a walk but struck out three more batters.

“I thought he pitched great,” said Pavlish of Brozino. “I know when he’s locked in. We can rely on him for anything, and that’s what he did. He stepped up, he pitched a really clean game, and that’s exactly what we needed.”

With two outs in the top of the fifth inning, Vaughn Emerich reached first base on an error, and Max Milia also reached first on an error as Emerich scored Lehigh’s second run.

Brozino’s two-out RBI double in the sixth inning scored Miguel Medina who plated the last run of the game.

“I wanted to get a hit really bad, and I was just really early, so then I was kind of thinking, get a base hit, base hit, and score the runner,” Brozino said.

In the bottom of the sixth, Emerich made a stop at second base on a hard hit ball by North Bethlehem’s Connor Laubach.

“I was upset for them,” said Hutchinson of his team. “They held it together. These kids united pretty well, and [Friday’s] win was big. That night was big for them against East Side, and then we came in here, and we were alive. I didn’t know what was gonna happen. I thought our top five, six guys, when they came back around to see their second at bat, I was like, this is our shot.”