Since playing to a 0-0 tie against Coplay, South Parkland has pulled things together and has won six straight Lehigh Valley Legion games by a combined score of 49-10. That stretch includes a 13-1 win over rival North Parkland Tuesday night, upping the Trojans record to 9-5-1, leaving them just five points out of first place as the Lehigh Valley Legion heads into the final weekend of the regular season.

Tuesday night’s game was shortened to five innings by the league’s mercy rule.

Against the Buffaloes, South Parkland starter Nate Leaswitch ran into some first-inning troubles, giving up a run on back-to-back doubles. Leaswitch then retired nine straight batters before giving up a base-hit. He finished the game by retiring the next five hitters.

“They just got a hold of the ball,” said Leaswitch of the first inning. “I think the one double they had, I threw too good of a fastball. After that, I just started figuring everything out. Everything was working and I felt like I was throwing a little bit harder today.”

One person who wasn’t surprised by the outing was head coach Thomas Kahn. Leaswitch has a big supporter in his coach, who believes the DeSales product is better than even Leaswitch himself imagines.

“He’s a battler,” said Kahn. “If he had as much confidence in himself as I have in him, he’d be great. He’s been great a lot of times, but somehow, he doesn’t have a lot of faith in himself. But I do and the rest of the team does, too.”

A key for South Parkland was to allow North Parkland starter Alex Oliver to struggle finding the strike zone. Oliver pitched well in the first and second innings, but got just one out in the third, walking five batters and issuing three wild pitches to go with three doubles that produced eight runs.

“I think that the one thing to do as a hitter is to get a good pitch to hit, and we talk about it every day, and they’re probably tired of hearing it,” said Kahn. “Don’t chase. Get a good pitch to hit and work yourself into a good count. Take the balls and kill the strikes.”

In all, the Trojans scored nine runs in the third inning to take a 9-1 lead. Mike Jenkins drove in two runs in the inning with a double to right. Jenkins plated another run later in the inning with a sacrifice fly to deep center field. Every starter in the South Parkland lineup had at least one hit, with EJ Brandt collecting two hits in three at-bats and driving in a run.

Leadoff hitter Kyle Novobilsky was on base three out of the four times that he came to the plate, with two hits and a walk. Novobilsky walked and scored in the third inning and added an RBI single later in the nine-run onslaught.

In the top of the fifth, he singled with runners on second and third to drive in two runs and then scored on Cullen Wadsworth’s triple that made it a 13-1 game.

The Trojans play Lower Macungie (5-9) and Salisbury (12-1) at home before finishing the season at Emmaus (6-7) on Sunday. South Parkland lost to Salisbury 2-1 on a squeeze play in their first meeting earlier this season. The Trojans also dropped a 2-1 game to Emmaus.

“We had a bit of a rough stretch to the season and it was tough getting into the thick of things, but we’re bouncing back,” said Leaswitch of the team’s success. “Everybody is hitting the ball and we’ve got good pitching, so I think that we can be really dominant in the playoffs this year.”