It would be an understatement to say Lansford’s Schuylkill Teener League Senior Division baseball team was outgunned Monday night.

Hegins, the monarch of the league with a 45-game winning streak and a 2019 state championship, outlasted the Evans Oil and Krajcirik’s sponsored team, 16-7.

For four innings, Lansford valiantly overcame the Hegins offensive assault.

After being down 5-1 in the third, the Panther Valley squad battled back to tie the game at 5 apiece.

It then came back again after being down 7-5 in the fourth to knot it up at 7-all.

But the Tri-Valley squad kept the assault coming, adding nine more runs in the last three frames.

Hegins Coach Devin Masser said he was glad to come away with the win considering the resistance that Lansford showed early.

“We didn’t make the plays in the field, so the only thing keeping you in the game is scoring,” Masser said. “We scored a lot of runs. We hit the ball well.”

Masser gave a lot of credit to Kole Miller, a reliever who pitched three innings of no-hit, shutout ball for Hegins.

On the night, Hegins amassed 22 hits, including two triples and three doubles and scored in all but the second inning.

Lansford had seven hits, and also got base runners on courtesy of walks and a few Hegins errors, only to leave many stranded.

Three times Lansford ended an inning with the bases loaded. In another inning, it left two runners on base.

Hegins didn’t fare much better in that department, leaving 10 runners behind. Twice they had the bags full when the third out came.

Lansford head coach Tim Goida took a positive attitude about the runners-left-in-scoring-position situation.

“I was glad to see bats wake up to have runners on base,” he said. “Hegins is a good team. We know they’re a good team. At the end, we just ran out of gas.

“You know what you’re in for when you play Hegins. They are just talented.”

The western Schuylkill team took a 3-0 lead in the first inning on three singles, a double and a walk.

Lansford put one run up in the bottom of the frame on a double by Michael Pascoe, who stole third and came home on a Matt Engler single.

In the third, Hegins went up 5-1, but the zesty Panther squad came back again with four runs during its turn at bat, as Chase Weaver, Hayden Goida, Pascoe and Cody Orsulak all scored in the inning.

After Hegins scored two more runs in the top of the fourth, Lansford again caught up with two runs of their own as Weaver and Pascoe crossed home in the inning.

Then like a seasoned long-distance runner, Hegins pulled away for good.

A DOUBLE PICKLE ... Lansford pulled off one of the finest defensive plays you’ll ever see in the top of the fourth inning. Hegins had a runner on second and nobody out when Kade Deeter smashed the ball into the outfield. A quick throw from Weaver to shortstop Haydn Goida found Kameron Wetzel, who had been on second, unable to make it to third. Quickly Goida, Pascoe (Lansford’s third baseman) and second baseman Drew Kokinda joined forces to entrap Wetzel. Pascoe tug Wetzel out, then flipped the ball to Kokinda because Deeter was trying to sneak to that bag. He was also caught in a rundown, and Kokinda, first baseman Engler and catcher Orsulak triple-teamed him with Orsulak eventually making the tag.

LOTS OF LOST BALLS ... The teams in the Schuylkill Teener League supply their own baseballs. In Lansford, a thick canvas of vegetation covers the mountain behind the backstop. Sometimes balls are recovered when hit on that hill. Last night, about a dozen were lost and couldn’t be found.

EXTRA HITS ... Pascoe proved lethal with his bat, hitting two doubles, one of which accounted for two RBIs.

Hegins 302 231 5 - 16 22 5

Lansford 104 200 0 - 7 7 3

Pascoe, Rohrbach (3) and Orsulak; Tietsworth, Parobek (3), Miller (5) and Murray. W - Parobek. L - Rohrbach.