Three area baseball teams are participating in the St. Luke’s Lehigh Valley High School Baseball Tournament, which started today.

Palmerton, Pleasant Valley and Northwestern are all part of the 32-team field, which includes 11 Colonial League schools and 17 from the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference.

The tournament was organized by Dan Villanti, the assistant director of alumni relations at DeSales University and the director of the Rising Stars travel baseball program. Villanti was aided by Notre Dame head coach Mike Bedics.

The 32 teams are broken into eight pools of four. Round robin games within each pool will take place today and Wednesday. The top two teams in each pool advance to a round of 16. Those squads play Friday, narrowing the field to four.

The semifinals will then take place at Coca-Cola Park on Sunday, with the championship game being held at the same site next Monday.

Palmerton is in Pool E and will play its games at Sammy Balliet Stadium in Coplay. The Blue Bombers face Whitehall tonight at 5 p.m. before meeting Allen (11 a.m.) and Parkland (2 p.m.) on Wednesday.

Pleasant Valley was placed in Pool G (Walnutport Regional) with three area Monroe County schools. The Bears were scheduled to face East Stroudsburg South this morning at East Stroudsburg Creekview Park before playing East Stroudsburg North at 1:30 p.m. PV concludes round-robin action Wednesday against Stroudsburg at 5 p.m at Bryfogle Park.

The third area team, Northwestern, is in Pool H, or the Limeport Regional. The Tigers met Salisbury this morning at 11 a.m. at Limeport Stadium. The 2018 district champs will play twice on Wednesday, facing Saucon Valley at 4 p.m. and Emmaus at 7 p.m.