Palmerton advances with win over SL

ALLENTOWN — Insurance is a good thing to have and Palmerton’s Amanda Lalik bought a whole bunch of it Friday night when she drove a ball over the left-center field fence at Patriots Park with the bases loaded to push the Bombers to a 7-1 win over Southern Lehigh in the wild card round of the Colonial League playoffs.

The win puts Palmerton into the league semifinals against Northern Lehigh Tuesday back at Patriots Park.

The other semifinal game Tuesday will feature Salisbury playing top-seed Bangor. The Falcons beat Wilson 10-0 in five innings to advance.

Palmerton took a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning on an RBI single from Lalik and a sacrifice fly from Madison Wenig. The Lady Bombers threatened again in the second but had a runner forced out at the plate and could not capitalize on a bases-loaded one-out situation.

Southern Lehigh’s Skylar Puzio settled in and retired 11 straight hitters at one point until Palmerton put runners on first and second with one out in the sixth, but Puzio settled in to cut the rally short and keep it a 2-0 game.

A one-out double followed by an error and a walk loaded the bases for Southern Lehigh in the bottom of the sixth. Paige Shupp came on in relief of starter Lexi Merkel and surrendered a groundball to Chloe McNulty that allowed Danielle Barnes to score from third and make it a 2-1 game.

The tag team of Merkel and Shupp could be a weapon for the remainder of the season for Palmerton.

“Last year when Lexi Merkel pulled up hurt about half-way through Paige really took over and threw well for us,” noted Hock. “This year it’s worked really well for us and if we can mix-and-match during a game we may try to do that to keep everybody off-balance because they are completely different.”

Ironically, Palmerton’s half of the seventh inning looked a lot like the first inning when it plated two runs. A leadoff double followed by an intentional walk and a sacrifice put runners on second and third with one out. Spartans coach Brian Neefe decided to walk Kailah Altemose intentionally to load the bases looking for another force out at home. Lalik came to the plate and had different plans that resulted in four runs worth of insurance for the Bombers.

“I just wanted to get it into the outfield and allow the runner on third to tag and get home, I really wasn’t expecting to clear the bases,” said Lalik with a broad smile.

The ball wound up easily clearing the fence but Lalik wasn’t the only one that was surprised.

“My first thought was telling my runner to tag up at third and then I realized there was no need for that,” laughed coach Bob Hock. “She put a really good swing on it and she’s been swinging the bat well and we were glad for those runs.”

Lalik believes the win sends a message to other teams that will face Palmerton along the way that the Bombers mean business.

“It shows other teams that we’ll play that we don’t mess around and we’re going to come to play hard,” said the Bombers third baseman.

CHESS GAME ... Hock made a number of player moves throughout the game including having Avery Neipert pinch-hit in the top of the second inning. In all, Palmerton used four different players as pinch-hitters throughout the game.

EVERYBODY ON THE BASES ... Everybody who had at least one at-bat for Palmerton reached base with two very excuseable exceptions. Paige Frantz dropped two big sacrifice bunts that led to runs in the first and seventh and Wenig delivered a sacrifice in the sixth.

Palmerton 200 000 5 - 7 8 1

So. Lehigh 000 001 0 - 1 3 2

Merkel, Shupp (6) and A. Frantz; Puzzio and Binder. W - Merkel. L - Puzzio. S - Shupp.