NAZARETH - It wasn't pretty for the Birches during the NorCo Legion championship game against Nazareth on Thursday, but they came up big during all of the right moments.

The Birches trailed by one run in the seventh inning with two outs when DaKota George hit an opposite-field single that tied the game at three.Travis Van Houten pitched in relief during the seventh and threw three scoreless innings, while his offense got the timely hit it needed in the top of ninth.Brent Beck's two-run, opposite-field triple proved to be the game-winner, as the Birches hoisted the trophy after an extra-inning championship rubber match victory, 6-3."Brent is great under pressure," said Birches head coach Al Foust of Beck, who had two hits and three RBIs during the win. "He came through for us against Hellertown and a number of other games when we were losing. Just like that, the team rallies around him. He's like a little spark plug. Not only can he run like a deer, he can hit with the best of them."The Birches struck first in the top of the first when Marshall Hanyon drove in Beck to take a quick lead.But, Nazareth scored twice in the bottom of the first, thanks to a pair of miscues by the Birches and an RBI single from Cade Stoneback. The Birches didn't re-claim the lead until the heroic ninth-inning events."We weren't scoring runs for a while, but we weren't striking out," said Foust. "We were hitting the ball. Sooner or later, they have to drop in somewhere."The hits eventually did drop, but the Birches were also helped out by seven Nazareth errors."The past two games we played solid defense, we were fundamentally sound," said Nazareth head coach Jason Brown. "I don't know what the reason was for today, I don't feel like the kids were tight before the game, but I can't get into the minds of all 17-year-olds. I told them that this is a learning tool."As timely as the Birches were at the plate, their defense kept the score much closer than it could have been.After Stoneback's RBI single in the first frame, he tried to score on a Kole Pokrivsak base hit. However, Beck, who was playing left field, gunned him down on a bang-bang slide at home, which kept the score at 2-1.With one out in the second, Nazareth's Steve Stasolla hit a single that should have loaded the bases-but that was an afterthought by the time he reached first base.The Nazareth runners weren't sure if Stasolla's ball to center would drop, so they hesitated. Matt Pierce gunned the ball to second to beat Vinny Spinelli, who was running from first. Immediately after Spinelli was pegged at second, Noah McMullen went too far off the third base bag, as he was beat trying to slide back when Kyle Cavanaugh applied the tag and the Birches escaped an early jam with a rare 8-6-3 double play."It's unbelievable," said Foust after the celebration. "This is what it's all about. I had a great group of kids that stuck together all year long. We did the same thing against Hellertown. We won the first game, then played terrible in Game No. 2, and then we bounce back. They seem to forget about the day before. I don't know what it is about this team, it's like they have an on and off switch. This group of kids is like my family."Foust has coached the Birches for six years and has compiled three division championships and two second-place finishes.Now, he finally has some serious hardware for his trophy case.RUBBER ARM … Stoneback started for Nazareth and was a workhorse. He pitched better than what the final result showed, as his defense didn't show up behind him. He hurled an incredible 148 pitches.WE TALKIN' BOUT PRACTICE … Van Houten came in for the Birches on three days rest and blanked Nazareth in the final three innings. Starting pitcher Nate Coursey yielded 11 hits, but limited Nazareth to just two runs. "He threw one warm-up pitch, he warmed up on the mound during the game, and that's what veterans do," noted Brown of Van Houten's performance. "They know how to pitch in big situations."THE RIGHT CALL, WRONG OUTCOME … Brown believed his staff made the right pitch selection during Beck's go-ahead triple in the ninth. "We knew he would be sitting on a first-pitch fastball and he was," Brown said. "We threw him a breaking ball, he was out on his front foot and just got enough of the bat on it to put the ball into the outfield."Birches 100 010 103 - 6 9 2Nazareth 200 100 000 - 3 10 7Coursey, Van Houten (7) and Hanyon; Stoneback, Dougherty (7) and Trenberth. W - Van Houten. L - Stoenback.