STANDISH – A little two-out magic went a long way for St. Dom’s Wednesday night.

Curt Johnson knocked in Aaron Allen with the winning run in the bottom of the sixth inning and top-seeded St. Dom’s held on for its fifth Western C baseball championship in six years with a 5-4 victory over No. 2 Hall-Dale Wednesday night at Mahaney Diamond on the campus of St. Joseph’s College.

The Saints (18-1) will face Eastern C champion George Stevens Academy for the state title at 2 p.m. Saturday at Mansfield Stadium in Bangor.

“It feels great,” Johnson said. “It was kind of heartbreaking losing (in the regionals to Livermore Falls) last year after getting this far. Luckily, we avenged that by beating Livermore the last game and it feels great going to my first state championship game of my career.”

The Saints, who trailed, 3-0, after two innings, scored all five of their runs with two out. The winning run came after Aaron Allen reached on a two-out single off Hall-Dale starter Ryan Leach.

“That was really key because Aaron had really struggled with Leach his first two at-bats (two Ks),” St. Dom’s coach Bob Blackman said. “He went to the plate determined and hit the ball up the middle to get it started. And then Curt, he couldn’t have come up bigger.”

Allen stole second on a delayed steal and went to third when catcher Jake Levesque’s throw sailed into center field.

Johnson then drove his third hit of the game up the middle to plate Allen on Leach’s 99th pitch.

“I was just trying to hit the ball hard,” said Johnson, a sophomore designated hitter. “We were looking for his off-speed the whole game because we know he likes to throw it a lot, so I just zoned in off-speed and luckily found a hole in the infield.”

“Ryan has a great change-up and we wanted him to get the left-hander (Richard Paradis) to start the inning, which he did, and then his coach got greedy,” Hall-Dale coach Tim Johnson said. “I tried to squeeze another out, and he got another out for us, but then they got the baserunner. Maybe you make a change then, but he’s been our big-game pitcher.”

The Bulldogs (14-4) had the potential tying and go-ahead runs at first and second with two out in the seventh, but Greg LaBonte struck out James McCullum to end the game.

“I tip my hat to them,” Johnson said. “It was a big game and they came up with hits. We hit some balls hard early and didn’t have any luck. We had some opportunities with runners on base and (needed) just one more hit somewhere.”

Hall-Dale wasted little time rattling Saints starter Allen, making him pay for back-to-back walks to start the game with a two-run double by Levesque. They added another run in the second, chasing Allen in the process. Tim Holbrook led of with a double. Following a one-out walk, Chris Bryant relieved Allen and surrendered an RBI single to Tyler Cummings to make it 3-0.

Leach cruised through the first two innings, then ran into two-out trouble in the third. Johnson reached on an infield single to lead off the inning, then moved to third on a pair of ground outs. Casey Parker drove him home with a double to left-center, then scored on Shayne Curtis’ single.

“He really likes to pitch away,” Blackman said of Leach. “He’s got that two-seamer that he throws away to the righties and likes his slider. So we were conceding anything on the inside third of the plate until with two strikes. We were looking away and looking to drive the gap. Once we got the first runner and got on base, we felt pretty good.”

Curtis moved to second on the throw home, then stole third and scored the tying run when the shortstop bobbled LaBonte’s grounder. Richard Paradis ripped a triple to right-center to score LaBonte and briefly put the Saints in front.

LaBonte relieved Parker in the fourth and the Bulldogs tied it up again on a single by Cummings and a triple by Leach.