It took three trips to Moravian College over three straight days and three extra innings on Saturday, but Northampton finally posted an 8-7 win over Liberty on Saturday to advance to the District 11 4A softball semifinals.
After the 10-inning victory, the Konkrete Kids (17-6) will face No. 1 seed and unbeaten Lehigh Valley Conference champ Parkland (21-0) on Tuesday night at Pates Park at 7. Colonial League champ Bangor (17-6) and Mountain Valley Conference champ Pleasant Valley (19-4) meet in the 4A semifinal opener at 5 p.m.
At some point area softball fans may have wondered if the Northampton-Liberty game would be over by Tuesday.
The two teams were rained out on Thursday after both teams were at the site.
And then on Friday, the teams waited out a ran delay before play was permanently stopped again in the top of the seventh inning with Northampton having taken a 7-5 lead. The Konkrete Kids also had a runner on second base.
When play resumed, Liberty, which went to sophomore hurler Victoria Schmidt, got out of that jam and then scored two runs in the bottom of the seventh when a walk by Reyna DeJeses and a double by Ashley Malek led to back-to-back sacrifice flies by Mariah Kondravy and Emily Cecchini.
Neither side could produce a run in the eighth or ninth, invokling the International tiebreaker at the start of the 10th, which means the inning begins with a runner at second base.
The runner for Northampton was Taylor Kerbacher, who made the last out of the ninth.
Kerbacher hustled to third on Bri Dalton's grounder to short and scored on Auria Enright's grounder to short.
Liberty began its half of the 10th with Cecchini on second and pinch-runner Brandi Grello got to third on a sacrifice bunt by Lauren Epsaro.
However, winning pitcher Jillian Muthard, who came on in relief of fellow freshman Taylor Keeney in the eighth, got Nicole Iasiello on a popup to second and Victoria Schmidt on a fly to left to end it.
"What a great game, what a great competition with great athletes," Northampton's first-year coach Kevin Mann said. "And we played it here at a beautiful complex at Moravian. The weather was a factor, but it has been a factor all year starting with the snow and cold in March."
And now, the K-Kids are playing past Memorial Day.
"I had no doubt from the beginning that we were going to pull this one out," said Kerbacher, a senior who had three hits and knocked in four runs, including a two-run double in the third inning on Friday.
"We came in here as the underdog, but we don't give up. We fight until the bitter end. They're a very good team, but so are we. It's my senior year and I don't want this to end. We couldn't control the weather and it kind of stunk having to come back here three days in a row, but it's all worth it if we're still playing on Tuesday night."
Northampton has rallied back from 3-0 deficits in both of its district wins over Easton and Liberty and seems to be peaking.
But the next challenge is much bigger -- Parkland.
Kerbacher isn't backing down, even though the Trojans have beaten Northampton three times by a combined total of 22-0.
"We're not letting them beat us a fourth time," Kerbacher said. "This is our fourth time against [Parkland ace] Morgan Rentzheimer and I have no doubt that we can take it this time. They're not coming at us like they did last time. They don't have the same excitement. They beat Nazareth and they knew they could beat Nazareth. We came into this game knowing we had to do a lot of work and now we leave here with a lot of momentum."
Liberty, meanwhile, closed the book on an 18-6 season and its senior group posted the best four-year run in school history -- registering 68 wins.
Coach Rich Giering, whose team played without all-star shortstop Alyshia Dellatore due to a disciplinary action, said he didn't agree with how everything was handled with the rain delay on Friday, but added: "We had our chances. We shouldn't have been in the spot we were in coming back here today.
"We're going to miss our seniors and I am going to miss writing their names down on a lineup card. But we have a lot of good kids coming back and our JV team lost just one game. We'll be a younger team, but we'll be back here again."
Northampton 002 003 200 1 -- 8 10 2
Liberty 300 020 200 0 -- 7 8 2
Keeney, Muthard (8) and Peters; Renner, Schmidt (7) and Malek. W: Muthard. L: Schmidt.
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