BUCKFIELD – The frustration of another loss to North Yarmouth Academy will dissipate over the summer, but it’s the way that it lost that will linger with the Buckfield baseball team for much longer.

After two straight years of being knocked out of the playoffs by the Panthers, the second-seeded Bucks saw perhaps their best chance to beat the Class D powerhouse slip away when they committed seven errors and suffered a 5-1 defeat in Wednesday’s Western Class D final at Gorham High School.

NYA (15-1) will vie for its third straight Class D championship in Bangor on Saturday.

“We didn’t capitalize on their mistakes and they did on ours,” said Buckfield coach Chuck Williams, whose team lost to NYA in last year’s final, 10-0, and in the semifinals the year before that. “The last two years, I feel, they beat us. This year, I think we beat ourselves.”

Credit NYA with putting Buckfield’s defense back on its heels from the start. Three of the first four Panthers laid down bunts. Two of them reached base, starting with leadoff batter Matt Curran, whose bunt Buckfield catcher Jeff Russell was unable to handle with his bare hand. Dan Bartlett drove Curran home with a double, then scored on a wild pitch to make it 2-0.

“We like to put pressure on the defense,” said NYA coach Bruce Poliquin. “It depends on who we’re playing, but we know they like to play back and we like to attack right off, see if they’re able to make the play and then we adjust from there.”

Another error in the second didn’t prove costly for the Bucks, but a muff at shortstop to start the third did. After Curran reached on the error, Luke Welch walked and Bartlett reached on another bunt single. Tim Lachance plated Curran with a sacrifice fly to right and Welch and Bartlett were able to move up when the throw home got by Russell. Buckfield starter Scott Wetherell (six innings, one earned run, five hits, five Ks, two walks) put the fire out, though, with a groundout and a pop out.

Buckfield (14-3) had its chances against NYA starter Tim DeLuca (seven innings, one earned run, five hits, eight Ks, three walks), but couldn’t break through after Harry Hayes’ (two hits) two-out double in the second and after loading the bases on two walks and an error in the third.

“We just couldn’t come up with that timely hit when we needed it,” Williams said.

The Bucks finally broke the ice in the fifth when Justin Dodge led off with a walk and Russell doubled him home. Russell got thrown out trying to stretch it into a triple. They got the first two men on in the seventh to bring the tying run to the on-deck circle, but couldn’t get the ball out of the infield against DeLuca the rest of the way.

“I wasn’t hitting spots with my overhand motion, so I had to rely a lot on my sidearm fastball,” said DeLuca, a Gray native who is 8-0 this season. “I didn’t throw as well as I have in the past.”

Buckfield’s ugliest defensive inning came in the fourth, when they made three errors resulting in two NYA insurance runs.

“We started the season with 10 errors against St. Dom’s and we ended it with seven against NYA,” said Williams. “When we didn’t take advantage of a couple of chances that they gave us, the pressure built.”