Middletown — One strike away. One heartbreaking strike away.

The East Lyme baseball team was one strike away from winning Sunday’s CIAC Class L championship, one strike away from bringing a state title back home to Chesterfield Road a year after losing in the final.

Describing what befell the Vikings after that. … There are no words strong enough.

Everything that could go wrong for East Lyme did, and painfully so. Notre Dame of West Haven scored twice in the seventh inning to tie the game and went on to win, 5-2, in eight innings at Palmer Field.

“We didn’t make the plays,” East Lyme head coach Jack Biggs said. “We didn’t execute down the (stretch), and (Notre Dame) got hot at the right time.”

“We were unlucky,” Vikings senior Dylan Feeney said.

It was the sixth state championship for the 11th-ranked Green Knights (19-9), the Southern Connecticut Conference runner-up. It combined with SCC and four-time Class LL champion Amity to give their league its 16th baseball title in 10 seasons.

Fourth-seeded East Lyme finished 20-6. That included a 16-game winning streak after it started the season 0-4.

“This is an amazing group,” Biggs said. “One game doesn’t define what we did this year. It was a pretty amazing run.”

The Vikings had two hits in the first inning and didn’t have another the rest of the game. It outscored its previous four opponents, 39-8.

“Two hits,” Feeney said. “Right there, that’s the reason (we lost). We went from 19 (in the semifinals) to two. We hit every single game. We normally put up 10 hits a game. That’s very surprising (we struggled). After the first inning, there was no doubt in my mind that we’d string together a win.”

Matt Abbey hit a two-run double for East Lyme and Matt Spang tripled.

Tyler Pyne singled to lead off the top of the seventh for Notre Dame. Mike Dziczkowski hit a slow roller to short that prevented the Vikings from forcing out Pyne or a double play. They had to settle for throwing Dziczkowski out at first.

Pyne went to third on a wild pitch and Matt Martinello walked. Spang came in to relieve Feeney and struck out Mike Secchiaroli.

Mike Torniero followed with an RBI single to cut East Lyme’s lead to 2-1. Zach Ardito walked to load the bases.

Spang had a 2-2 count against Dylan Reynolds, but hit him with the next pitch to force home pinch runner Joe Morris and tie the game.

East Lyme had a chance to win in the bottom of the seventh as Matt Malcom led off with a walk and went to second on a wild pitch.

Pinch hitter Corey Levesque hit a shallow popup trying to bunt Malcom to third base. Frank Longley raced in from first base and made a terrific catch.

Reliever Ardito would strand Malcom at third base.

Mike Piechota doubled to start the eighth inning and went to third base on Pyne’s sacrifice bunt. Dziczkowski was intentionally walked.

Martinello followed with a grounder that was bobbled and then thrown away, scoring Piechota and advancing both runners to second and third.

Torniero’s two-out, two-run single staked the Vikings.

“It was definitely nerve-wracking, that’s for sure,” Torniero said of the comeback. “But we got through.”

East Lyme went down in order to end the game.

“We had a great record,” Feeney said. “We had a lot of fun as a team. I wouldn’t trade these guys for the world. I love every one of them.”

“Not everybody gets to do it back-to-back,” Biggs said about playing in consecutive state finals. “As we sit back next week and take this all in, we’ll be like, ‘Wow, this was a pretty amazing season.’”

n.griffen@theday.com