Baseball postseason rundown: Noah LeJeune’s sacrifice fly in the seventh pushes Bethel Park past No. 1 West Allegheny and into WPIAL Class 5A final

For the third time in four years, Bethel Park will play for a WPIAL Class 5A baseball championship.

Noah LeJeune’s sacrifice fly in the top of the seventh inning helped No. 4 Bethel Park rally from three runs down to slip past No. 1 West Allegheny, 7-6, in a semifinal Wednesday at Washington & Jefferson.

Bethel Park (15-6-1), which lost in the final in 2021 and 2023, will aim for its first title since 1987 and third overall when it takes on No. 7 Penn-Trafford (19-3) in the championship Tuesday at Wild Things Park.

In a battle of teams meeting in the semifinals for the third time in four seasons (Bethel Park beat West Allegheny in 2021 before West Allegheny returned the favor in 2022), Bethel Park finished strong after the score was tied, 6-6, after six innings. Mike Bruckner led off the top of the seventh with his third hit of the game, an infield single, and moved to second on a wild pitch. Ryan Walsh then walked and Owen White reached on an error to load the bases. That set the stage for LeJeune, a junior whose fly ball to center scored Bruckner with the go-ahead run.

In the bottom of the seventh, West Allegheny’s Derek Curry reached on a throwing error with one out, but Bethel Park reliever Dylan Paul got the next hitter, Logan Lambert, to hit into a game-ending double play.

Curry earned the save, while Dylan Schumacher picked up the win after striking out five in two scoreless innings. West Allegheny was kept off the board the final three innings after scoring six runs in the first four.

West Allegheny (17-4), which saw its seven-game win streak snapped, surged to a 3-0 lead following Lambert’s RBI single in the first and a two-run second that included Jonah Buglak’s run-scoring single and Brady Miller’s RBI double.

But Bethel Park, winner of five in a row and eight of nine, erupted for five runs in the third to race into the lead. Bruckner and Walsh notched two-run doubles and Joey Levis added an RBI single to make it 5-3. An inning later, the Black Hawks upped their advantage to 6-3 courtesy of Bruckner’s RBI single.

West Allegheny then scored three runs in the fourth to knot the score at 6. Miller’s one-out single with the bases loaded brought home two to make it 6-5 and Wil Gubba followed with a sacrifice fly to center fielder Ryan Tierney, who made a diving catch on the play.

But that was the last the West Allegheny offense would be heard from in the game, so the Indians will now turn their attention to qualifying for the PIAA tournament. They will play Franklin Regional (14-8) in the WPIAL third-place consolation next Wednesday at Washington & Jefferson.