As luck would have it, North and South Parkland were the only remaining undefeated teams going into the third day of the Region 2 American Legion baseball playoffs.

It seemed to make sense that the two teams would play each other in regionals since they had already played each other five times this summer, including playing for the Lehigh Valley League championship.

The series was somewhat of a recap of the season for North Parkland as it lost the first three times the two teams played but won the next two as the team got hot at the right time.

In the regional game, both teams would still remain in the double elimination tournament, but the winner would have a little margin for error while the loser would face potential elimination.

With Steven Sepko starting for North Parkland and Sawyer Marsteller for South Parkland, a pitcher’s duel was expected. Neither pitcher disappointed, and it came down to defense as one key error that allowed North Parkland to get a 2-1 win over their rivals.

The game was scoreless going to the bottom of the third inning when Tsubasa Magota reached on an error. Nate Unger was hit by a pitch, but Marsteller responded to get a strikeout for the second out of the inning.

The Buffaloes pulled off a double steal to put both runners into scoring position for Peyton Scherff, who reached on an infield single to score one run. Leo Dauberman followed with another infield single to make it 2-0 in favor of the Buffaloes on two unearned runs.

Sepko and Marsteller continued to do their jobs keeping their opponents off the board.

With one out in the bottom of the fourth, South Parkland’s Andrew Klotz singled, which seemed to be just a minor bump in the road for Sepko when he recorded a strikeout to get the second out of the inning. However, during the at-bat, Sepko delivered a wild pitch that allowed Klotz to move up to second.

Julian Santiago came to the plate and turned a 1-0 pitch into a hard ground ball single into right field that allowed Klotz to score and make it a 2-1 game.

The Buffaloes put runners on first and third with two outs in the bottom of the fifth but could not add any runs to their lead against Marsteller, who then put down North Parkland in order in the bottom of the sixth. Sepko allowed two base runners in the sixth and just a walk in the seventh, but the walk was mixed between three strikeouts in the inning to finish the game.

“We made a couple mistakes defensively,” said Algard, whose team was still alive but had to work its way to the championship out of the loser’s bracket of the tournament. “It was just one of those close games where a mistake can cost you, but you also have to hand it to them because they played a good game and took advantage of those mistakes.”

North Parkland picked up its first loss of the tournament on Monday when it fell to two-time defending state champion Quakertown 6-3. Beers had two hits in the game and scored a run and drove in a run for the Buffaloes. Unger and Brody Morabito also picked up an RBI.

Because of Legion rules, even with the loss to Quakertown, because of the Buffaloes win in the battle of the undefeated teams, they had a bye into the championship game while Quakertown had to face West Lawn, to determine the other team in the finals.

“We played well all the way through,” said North Parkland coach Jay Marakovits. “We have had to work hard to turn the season around and our guys put in the work, and we made a good run when it mattered most.”

See next week’s Press for more about the Region 2 championship game.