SHIPPENSBURG — The Northern Polar Bears had Greencastle-Antrim’s number this softball season.

The Bears split with the Blue Devils in two regular season games. On Wednesday afternoon at Shippensburg University, Northern hung a 10-6 defeat on G-A in a District 3 Class 5A semifinal game.

Kindal Rice

The No. 2 seeded Blue Devils (18-5) will host No. 4 Red Land (20-3) for third place in the district on Thursday at 4:30. Northern (16-7) will take on No. 1 Lower Dauphin (19-5) at Millersville University on Thursday at 4 p.m. for the title.

“We had one bad inning that came back to haunt us,” Greencastle coach Mark DeCarli said. “The thing is, we’re not chasing district titles; we’re chasing state titles. We have a chance tomorrow to get third place, which is where we finished last year (when the Blue Devils went all the way to the PIAA championship game).

“We want to win that game and get in the upper side of the bracket. It worked well for us last year.”

The Bears scored two runs in each of the first two innings for a 4-0 lead. Trinity Artman hit a two-run single and Sabrina Paulin belted a solo home run.

But Greencastle came back to score 3 in the bottom of the second. Minnie Gambacurta got a one-out single and Katie Zawilinski was hit by a pitch. Danica Murphy singled in a run and a sacrifice fly by Allison Logsdon scored the second. Paiton then recorded a base hit to bring in the third run and make it 4-3.

Zawilinski started in the circle, but was knocked out in the fourth inning, when Northern dropped a 6-run bomb.

DeCarli said, “They started with a walk and a hit by pitch, hit a couple of bloopers for hits and we didn’t help with an error or two. We tried to work our way back, and as a team we hit the ball well and put it in play.”

Greencastle out-hit the Bears, 13-9, but committed four errors.

G-A’s Kindall Rice was 2-for-4 with 3 RBIs, including a 2-run home run after Kylie Kerns tripled in the fifth. Kiersten Swain was 3-for-4 and Gambacurta was 2-for-3.