SHIPPENSBURG, Pa. -- When Shaler scored a run in the top of the first inning of the PIAA Class AAAA softball championship yesterday, coach Skip Palmer harnessed his celebration. Intuition took over.

"I said to my assistants, 'OK, this is good, but one [run] won't be enough, it won't beat this team," Palmer said.

His hunch turned to reality, Shaler's offense grew cold from there, and it was Parkland -- on the strength of one big inning -- that earned the title with a 5-1 victory.

Parkland (25-4) secured the win against Shaler (16-6) by limiting the Titans to just three hits after the first and mounting a three-run third of its own at Shippensburg University's Robb Field.

Parkland, a District 11 school located in Allentown, had seven hits, got a stellar four-hitter from senior pitcher Deanna Stinner and put the brakes on a surprising run by a Shaler team that did not have a senior starter.

Through the heart of the game, Stinner -- who also was an all-state volleyball player and will be an infielder at St. Joseph's next season -- retired 12 consecutive batters.

"Am I disappointed in our season, in what we did this year? No way," Palmer said. "We went out there and we fought. Sometimes, you go up against a team that is better than you on a certain day. And, on this day, they were better than us."

The reason Parkland was better was understandable. The Trojans, from top to bottom, put the ball in play. Parkland batters struck out just twice against Shaler pitcher Abby Nichter, with one of those being a pinch-hitter in the final inning.

"They hit the heck out of the ball," Palmer said.

"That is a great hitting team. We have not played a team that hits the ball the way Parkland does."

But, it wasn't as much what Nichter wasn't doing. Rather, it was what Parkland did to adjust to a relative unknown to them.

"We had not seen [Nichter] at all, and other than reading about her on the Internet in your paper, we didn't know all that much about her," Parkland coach Glen Ray said. "It just took us a little while to get used to her. Once we figured out she wanted to live on the outside of the plate, well ..."

Once Parkland figured it out, it offset that 1-0 lead Shaler built in the first when Lauren Hackett's fielder's choice chased home Gina Goss.

Parkland scored three runs on four hits in the third, effectively putting the game out of reach. Melissa Cottone had an RBI single, but it was Kelly Muth's high-arcing double off the center-field wall that did the most damage, driving in two and making it 3-1.

From there, Parkland tacked on one run each in the fifth and sixth, the run in the sixth coming when Jamie Motsko started the inning by hammering a Nichter pitch over the center-field wall for a solo home run.

The win held special meaning for Ray, a former East Stroudsburg football standout and Vietnam veteran who retired following the game after leading Parkland for 26 seasons.

He also led teams to championships in 1995 and '98.

"If you are going to write a book, how could it end any better than this?" he said. "I'll answer my own question. It can't."