Northwestern falls in CL semifinals

HAMBURG — While a do-over would have been better, Northwestern settled for an extended time-out in their Colonial League semifinal game against Southern Lehigh.

Rains suspended the game on Tuesday at Parkland High School leaving the Spartans leading 4-0 with Northwestern coming to the plate for the bottom of the third. Rains kept pushing the game back further and further until the two teams finally met again Friday morning at Hamburg Area High School to play out the remaining innings.

As it turned out, the Spartans held on and won the contest by the same 4-0 score.

For Northwestern, the wait to return to the field wasn’t as agonizing as you might think that it would be.

“It didn’t really bother us,” said Tiger head coach Duran Porrino. “Actually, I thought that it gave us time to regroup a little and calm down before things got too far out of hand. Even with moving where we were going to play, it wasn’t really a problem.”

Southern Lehigh scored two runs in the first and tacked on another pair of runs in the second. Vince Castrine started for Northwestern and was relieved by Mason Vogwill in the second inning. Vogwill would go on to pitch the rest of the game, allowing four hits and four walks while striking out seven batters. A bunt single was compounded by Vogwill’s throwing error on the play, but he responded to put down the next three hitters in order and stranded the runner on third.

The normally potent Northwestern offense was stymied by Andrew Lievendag, who allowed just four hits and struck out seven.

“We have to figure out how to win when we don’t score five runs,” Porrino explained. “We’ve lost games 2-1, 5-2 and we have to realize that in the playoffs you’re going to be facing good pitchers, and there are going to be games where you don’t put those big numbers on the board. The trick is to still find a way to win those games.”

The Tigers put runners in scoring position in three straight innings and opened up the seventh with a walk and a base hit but couldn’t get another hit to push any runners across the plate. Rafe Perich came close to clearing the bags in the seventh when he hit a long fly ball to left, but the ball was caught just in front of the fence. The ball likely would have left the park at Parkland, but the larger field at Hamburg was able to hold the ball in play.

“That ball was well hit and would have been out of most parks,” said Porrino. “We just struggled to get a big hit and you have to credit them because they made some plays and they got some strikeouts when they needed them.”

NOT DONE YET ... Northwestern will now prepare for the District 11 playoffs, which begin next week. Their first-round opponent won’t be set until Sunday but it’s likely that they’ll be traveling throughout their stay in the tournament. “I still think we can beat good teams, and we’ll look to prove that in districts,” said Porrino.

STREAK OVER ... Northwestern’s loss snapped their streak of three straight appearances in the Colonial League championship game.

HOW IT ALL PLAYED OUT ... Palisades beat Saucon Valley 8-3 in the other semifinal game with David Platt pitching a perfect game into the seventh inning for Saucon Valley. In the match-up between Southern Lehigh and Palisades, the Spartans won 4-1 to become Colonial League champions. All of the action was compressed into one day because of the weather over the past week.

So. Lehigh 220 000 0 - 4 8 0

N’western 000 000 0 - 0 4 2

Lievendag and Amory; Castrine, Vogwill (2) and Wiik; W - Lievendag. L - Castrine.