The Tigers take Round One.

In a showdown Thursday between two of the top baseball teams in the Colonial League, Lehighton played host to Northwestern Lehigh for the first of two meetings in a four-day stretch.

What originally began as a fast-paced pitcher’s duel eventually turned into a scoring outburst for the Tigers to take a 9-3 victory.

With both teams having already qualified for the district and league playoffs, the game was an opportunity to evaluate how they matched up against each another, and find areas of their games to work on in preparation for the playoffs.

The first three innings saw zeros across the board as Cole Dynda for the Tigers and Jake Lewis for the Indians matched each other pitch-for-pitch, leaving both teams stymied at the plate.

Waiting for one team to finally break through, it was Lehighton in the fourth that posted the first runs of the game as Aiden Albert crushed a two-run home run to give his team a 2-0 lead.

The Indians used the long ball again in the fifth as Cody Snyder went deep to take a 3-0 lead.

As Lewis continued his dominance on the mound, it appeared Lehighton was about to cruise to a comfortable victory.

But the never-say-die Tigers proved why they’re so dangerous to play against.

After loading the bases with better approaches at the plate in the sixth inning, Watson Church got his team on the board with a two-run single. Josh Farber followed with a sacrifice fly to tie the score 3-3 and eventually send the game to extra innings with Church pitching in relief for Dynda.

The patience of Northwestern paid off in the long run as Lewis ran out of pitches with men on base in the eighth.

That kick-started a six-run frame that included two-run doubles from both Dynda and Shane Hulmes, an RBI single from Aiden Freeman, and a bases-loaded walk.

Even after the slow start, Tigers’ head coach Brian Polaha had no doubt that this kind of offensive breakthrough was eventually going to come.

“We were kind of stagnant for the first four or five innings, but then we broke through,” he said. “I know we haven’t been playing great this week, but I feel like there’s always a reason why good teams consistently find ways to win like we did the other day too.

“Good teams just find ways to win. Because we do score a lot, because we have a good offense and good depth, we never believe we’re out of a game. So in these tight games, it didn’t surprise me at all. If you don’t put us away, we have that belief that we eventually are going to have that big inning like which we pretty much regularly have all year.”

Three quick outs from Church in the bottom frame capped off the comeback victory for the Tigers, which keeps them at the top of the Colonial League standings.

On the other side, Lehighton finds itself in a rough stretch having lost its last three games, and four of its last six after starting the season 7-0.

Indians head coach J.C. Dietz considers his team’s cold streak to be the result of poor offensive fundamentals.

“Right now we’re in a rut trying to hit, and until we get out of our hitting funk here, that’s the way it’s going to be,” he said. “It was the way we manufactured runs that we’re used to putting the ball down and bunting, stealing, playing small ball. But we’re not getting many guys on base.

“And when you don’t get guys on base, unfortunately you’re not able to play small ball, you’re not able to do those sorts of things.”

In spite of not playing their best offensively, Lehighton has proved that it has the ability to go toe-to-toe with two of the top teams in the Colonial League in both Northwestern and Saucon Valley, who defeated the Indians 2-1 in their previous game.

It’s also safe to say that the Colonial League has not seen the last of these two teams, as they will be forces to reckon with once the playoffs begin.

ROUND TWO … Northwestern and Lehighton will face each other again on Sunday in a 6 p.m. matchup at DeSales University. It will be the Tigers’ senior night game.

Northwestern 000 003 06 - 9 6 0

Lehighton 000 210 00 - 3 7 1

Dynda, Church (7) and Fitch; Lewis, Behler (8), Lawrence (8) and Light. W - Church. L - Lewis.

Records: Northwestern (14-2; 12-2 CL); Lehighton (9-5; 9-4 CL).