A loss in its first Lehigh Valley Legion tournament game forced Lower Macungie into playing every game as an elimination game.

The Mustangs made it past Whitehall-Coplay before having to face Northern Valley in the next round. That’s where the season came to an end as the LM offense went missing and some defensive miscues played a role in its downfall.

Against Whitehall, Chase Simmons put the Mustangs on top when he delivered a sacrifice fly to make it a 2-1 game in the bottom of the sixth. Lower Mac got some breathing room when Dayne Schmidt followed with a two-run double to make it 4-1, which stood as the final score and eliminated Whitehall-Coplay from the postseason.

Adrian Fleetwood tripled and walked twice to score two runs for Lower Macungie.

Simmons also handled mound duties and threw a complete game on 94 pitches, allowing six hits and no walks while striking out six batters to get the win.

Usually by this point in the season teams have seen their opponents’ pitchers at least once, but that wasn’t the case against Northern Valley.

Even though it was the fourth meeting of the season between the two teams, Aidan Freeman was a new face to go up against the Mustangs and he kept them lassoed throughout the game to get a 3-0 shutout and end the season for Lower Macungie.

Freeman struck out nine batters while walking just one.

“He was very good,” said Lower Macungie head coach Jeff Smith. “He may have been the best of their pitchers that we saw and that’s saying something because they have a very good team. You just have to tip your cap to them because they were better than us today when it really counted.”

Connor Horwath did his job on the mound as he held the Chargers to just three unearned runs in six innings before giving way to Jack Sparango, who threw a scoreless seventh inning.

Lower Macungie committed three errors that led to all of Northern Valley’s runs in the game.

“We had some rough spots today, that’s for sure,” said Smith. “I just told the guys though that I am proud of them, very proud of them. They’re a young team and they held things together this season and made it pretty deep into the playoffs. I think next season will be a good one for us because we only lose two guys and they’ll have a lot more experience then.”

Lower Macungie finished 8-8-1 on the season overall. Two of those wins came against South Parkland, which was unbeaten by any other team in the LVL regular season and was atop the league standings from opening day through the beginning of the tournament.

Fleetwood led Lower Mac with a .326 average and scored a team-high 11 runs out of the leadoff spot, with Josh Diaz and Dayne Schmidt both driving in a team-high seven runs.

On the mound, Simmons led the team with seven starts and posted a 2.57 ERA on the season with 28 strikeouts in 30 innings of work. The team leader in strikeouts was Horwath, who struck out 31 batters in 33 innings and finished with a 0.64 ERA, making three starts and five relief appearances.

Ryan Hummell was consistently good all season with a 2.10 ERA and 27 strikeouts in 26 2/3 innings on the season.

“We had some kids step up for us this season,” noted Smith. “We did some really good things. This Northern Valley team is a good team and we played them tough four times, and we were the only team to beat South Parkland during the regular season and that says something.”

North Parkland and South Parkland will play for the tournament championship this week with both teams qualified for the Region 2 playoffs that start Friday at Boyertown High School.