Legion baseball opened its Region 2 playoffs last Saturday in hot, humid, rainy weather. Game times were pushed around after a two-hour rain delay and every game took over two hours to play seven innings. When Monday finally came around, the weather cleared, but South Parkland was not around to enjoy the sunshine having lost its first two games to be eliminated from the tournament.

On Saturday, South Parkland faced West Lawn and the game was an instant classic.

Trailing 3-0 going to the bottom of the sixth, the Trojans put runners on first and second by way of a walk and a hit batter to bring Xander Provence to the plate. Provence jumped on a pitch that sailed to left field, chasing Nick Crocona to the fence where he became a spectator and watched the ball land well beyond the fence.

“Xander has a way of coming through for us in those situations and that was a great at-bat,” said coach Will Algard. “He has come through for us in those spots a lot this season.”

Starter Owen Delong came out to pitch the seventh but ran into issues and exited with runners on first and second with two outs to give way to Mack Parsell, who struck out Matt Kramer to end the inning. West Lawn got a leadoff double, a groundball out and a sacrifice fly to take a 4-3 lead over South Parkland going to the bottom of the 11th. Trevor Bilodeau came on to pitch for the Owls and worked around a throwing error to keep Parkland off the board.

The next day, South Parkland returned to face Northampton and wasted a big outing by Jaiden Wannamaker and fell to the K-Kids 2-0.

Wannamaker threw six innings, giving up just two hits and one walk with four strikeouts. He was charged with two runs, only one of which was earned. The Trojan offense managed six hits and had a runner on third with less than two outs in each of the first two innings and they were still there at the end of the inning. For the rest of the game, they were unable to get a runner past first base.

“Jaiden was great for us today,” said Algard. “He pitched really well but we just couldn’t get big hits when we needed them and that was our downfall.”

In the tournament, South Parkland hit .210 (13-62). Their pitchers posted an impressive 2.65 ERA with four walks and eight strikeouts in their two games. Provence led the team in hitting with a .571 (4-7) average, a home run and three RBI. Kurt Meehan went 3-for-8 (.375) in the tournament.

The Trojans were winners of both the Lehigh Valley Legion regular season title and the league tournament by defeating rival North Parkland in the final.

“We had a great season, and I told the guys that they had no reason to hang their heads because we just got beat by a couple of good teams this time around,” said Algard. “To win both the regular season championship and the tournament championship is quite an accomplishment and we’ll take it.”