Legion baseball is full of pitfalls for coaches.

Families go on vacations. Players have summer jobs. There are any number of other distractions for players.

A team can sail through the regular season and then when the postseason arrives it may be time for that vacation and a top player – or two – may be lost.

It works the other way, too. Suddenly, a team that has made it through the regular season but doesn’t necessarily look like a championship contender gets hot.

South Parkland may be the exception where a team starts the season hot and stays hot.

The Trojans finished the regular season 12-2 and had a first-round bye in the double-elimination Lehigh Valley League tournament.

After an hour-and-a-half rain delay Tuesday night, South Parkland opened postseason play against Northern Valley and had a scare before coming out on top with a 2-1 walk-off win to advance in the winner’s bracket.

“It was weird because looking at the sky and at the radar on my phone, I really didn’t think we were going to play,” said SP head coach Will Algard. “But I kept telling the kids to stay focused even though I doubted we would play.”

Parkland’s Mack Parsell and Northern Valley’s Cole Dynda were locked up in the pitcher’s duel and each delivered four scoreless innings to start the game.

Both teams had two hits in the four innings before Northern Valley manufactured a run with a leadoff double from Nolan Fitzgerald, a ground ball that sent him to third and a safety squeeze that brought him home with the first run of the game.

The 1-0 lead marked just the third time this season that South Parkland had trailed in a game with the other two games against Lower Macungie ending in losses.

In the bottom of the inning, South Parkland loaded the bases with nobody out, but Dynda got three straight outs to work out of the jam unscathed.

The Trojans broke through to tie the game in the bottom of the sixth when Andrew Klotz was hit by a pitch to open the inning and then stole second base with Connor Gerhart at the plate. Gerhart then dropped a bunt to move the runner but ended up with a base hit to put runners on first and third.

Grant Damweber lifted a fly ball to center that was deep enough to score courtesy runner Muhammad Curtis, who had come on to run for Klotz.

“Dynda pitched really well,” said Algard. “We just kept telling our kids that we believe in them as coaches and we just needed them to believe in themselves. They really showed their belief in themselves and each other and just hung in there.”

Northern Valley failed to score in the top of the seventh and looked to hold South Parkland scoreless in its half of the inning to send the game to extra innings.

Julian Santiago led off the inning with a double to chase Dynda off of the mound as he reached 99 pitches on the night. Parker Schaffer came on in relief and again, Parkland turned a sacrifice bunt into an infield single to put runners on first and third.

In a game that was well played defensively, it would be ironic that Schaffer’s first pitch to Brady Derr was wild and allowed Santiago to score from third with the winning run.

South Parkland will now face North Parkland, which beat Lower Macungie in Monday night’s opening round.

“You never know what’s going to happen,” said Algard. “We know that North Parkland has some of the top arms around and that sets them up well for a tournament like this, so they’re always tough. I don’t know if we’ll wind up seeing Lower Macungie again, but they beat us twice this season, so we would sort of like to play them again to see what happens.”