PHILADELPHIA — It was the seventh inning when the Delaware South all-stars started feeling a certain sense of deja vu.

In this case, that wasn’t a good thing.

Mid Penn, which had handed the downstaters their only Carpenter Cup loss, had cut Delaware South’s four-run lead down to just one in its last at-bat.

This time, though, Delaware South got the final out to preserve a 4-3 victory and capture its fifth softball Carpenter Cup title at FDR Park on a hot Tuesday afternoon.

While the downstate franchise has won the regional tournament for high school players five time, no other team has won it more than twice.

“It was pretty interesting there in the seventh,” said Delaware South manager Shawn Phillips, a Delmar assistant coach. “Especially after we lost to them the first game in kind of the same fashion. It was kind of the same feeling, like ‘They’re not going away. It’s not easy to put them away. They’re going to keep battling.’

“It was one of those, ‘Hey, we won the game, it’s hot,’” Phillips said about his players’ reaction to winning. “‘Let’s get the trophy and move on.’”

Delaware South’s players will get to return to Philadelphia next Thursday when they’ll be honored on the field before the Phillies game with the Braves.

The rest of the Carpenter Cup tournament, run by the Phillies, was completed on June 23. There wasn’t enough daylight left to play the finals that day, though, and the two squads weren’t both available again until Tuesday.

Delaware South went 5-1 in the tourney, winning its final three contests. Tuesday’s victory also avenged the downstaters’ one loss, a 5-3 setback to Mid Penn in eight innings on June 23.

Mid Penn was 5-0 before Tuesday’s loss.

“The girls were talking in pre-game, ‘Hey, we’ve come up this way, we might as well win it while we’re here,’” said Phillips. “They had that mindset. There were a lot of good leaders so you really don’t have to coach a whole lot. You sit back, watch and try to guide them.”

Tuesday’s rematch was scoreless until Delaware South picked up a run in the fifth. Then, in the sixth, Delmarva Christian’s Kandice Schlabach belted a two-run double to right center to give Delaware South a 4-0 cushion.

The first-team All-State slugger has struggled in her first few at-bats before getting the clutch hit.

“You do something like, it’s pretty impressive,” said Phillips.

The downstaters needed all four of those runs when Mid Pen rallied for its three runs in the bottom of the seventh.

This was the second Carpenter Cup title that Phillips has been a part of it. The former Laurel High pitching standout helped Delaware South win the baseball tournament in 2000.

Delaware South’s players, almost all of whom are from the Henlopen Conference, take a lot of pride in their softball ability.

“When you win it five times that means we’ve got pretty good softball down this way,” said Phillips. “You’re representing everybody in your school. That’s what they’re playing for.”