PARIS — Brady LaFrance’s first swing in the bottom of the seventh inning was one of the ugliest anyone has seen this season.

His second swing was the most beautiful the Oxford Hills Vikings have seen this season, if not in the last several.

LaFrance’s two-out gap shot drove home Ty Martin with the winning run as Oxford Hills recovered from Lewiston’s four-run comeback in the top of the seventh to survive, 6-5, in Wednesday’s Eastern Class A quarterfinal at Gouin Athletic Complex.

The third-seeded Vikings (12-5) will face No. 2 Messalonskee, the two-time defending Eastern A champion, in the semifinals on Saturday at Thomas College. Oxford Hills won their only meeting in the regular season, 7-2.

No. 6 Lewiston, which trailed 5-0 after the first inning, ends its season at 8-9.

With Martin standing at second, LaFrance, a right-handed batter, swung at Matt Poulin’s first pitch almost as an afterthought. It hit off his right arm, even though it didn’t make contact with the bat.

“I had my mind decided. like, I have to swing at this. But I was too late, and it got me,” LaFrance said, checking for a mark on the upper part of his right arm. “Didn’t hurt.”

“I’ve never, ever seen that in my entire life,” Oxford Hills coach Shane Slicer said. “I was a little nervous about what he was seeing at that time.”

Luckily for the Vikings, LaFrance saw enough to note that it was a fastball that made him look bad.

“He hit me in the arm the first time, so I figured he was coming back with it,” LaFrance said.

And it was a fastball LaFrance laced into the gap in left-center, plating Martin and prompting a team dogpile on top of LaFrance in front of second base.

“A lot of teams might pack it in and say, ‘Oh well’ (after losing the lead),” LaFrance said. “Not us. We weren’t going down without a fight, no matter what.”

The Blue Devils didn’t pack it in after a discouraging first inning in which they put themselves in a 5-0 hole with three walks and two errors. Starter Eddie Emerson settled down after that and combined with Poulin to hold Oxford Hills to three hits over the next five innings and keep their team in the game.

“Eddie threw a lot of pitches that first inning and I thought getting him through three, maybe four would be very good after that, and he gave us exactly what we had hoped,” Lewiston coach Dave Jordan said. “Matt came in and did a very nice job, too.”

Lewiston had a couple of chances to put dents in the lead against Vikings starter Riley Chickering. It loaded the bases with one out in the third and didn’t take advantage, then loaded them again with nobody out in the fourth and only got one run out of it when Chickering induced a rally-killing 6-4-6 double play.

“We had a number of opportunities to score. We weren’t able to,” Jordan said. “But they were very resilient. They kept battling. They played with the heart of a champion being down 5-0 and coming back.”

Chickering breezed through the fifth and sixth, then seemed to tire in the seventh, yielding a leadoff double to Emerson. An error and Gage Cote’s RBI single brought the tying run to the plate.

Mike Wong walked to load the bases, then Nick Perreault singled to make it 5-3 and end Chickering’s day.

“I was still throwing strikes. They just started hitting it,” Chickering said. “I think my fastball lost a little zip to it. I think my curve ball was a little loopy and didn’t quite have the bite to it.”

With Walt Feeney unavailable, the Vikings were a little short in the bullpen, so  Slicer tried to get as much as he could out of Chickering before turning to junior Will Frank.

“Will hadn’t thrown many innings, so we kept (Chickering) out there maybe a little longer,” Slicer said. “Third, fourth time through the lineup for them, and his curve was starting to hang a little. He gritted it out. He pitched great.”

Frank got the double-play grounder he was looking for, but shortstop Matt Beauchesne, who made a nice play to start the earlier twin-killing, stumbled around the second base bag. He got the out there, but the relay to first had to be rushed and wild, allowing two runs to score.

Frank kept his cool and preserved the tie with a strikeout and ground out to end the inning.

“You’ve got to give credit to Will Frank,” Slicer said. “He could have gotten out of it clean. He got a ground ball. That’s what he’s supposed to do. I thought he had good composure in that situation.”

Martin started the bottom of the frame with a walk and moved to second on Matt Smith’s sacrifice.

“I think it takes a special group of players to be able to bounce back like that,” Chickering said. “Ty getting on to start that inning was huge, and Matt bunting him over, and then Brady gets that big hit. It’s a total team effort.”