FERNANDINA BEACH - Clay High coach Josh Persinger has been chewing some fingernails lately as his Blue Devil baseball team took their lumps early in the season.

After a scintillating 7-3 win over rival Fleming Island, a 7-3 win over Columbia High, a 10-1 win over Middleburg and a 3-1 win over Nease High, all schools having pretty good baseball seasons, Persinger has not lightened up on his between-innings snacks, but he’s liking what he is seeing. A come-from-behind 4-3 win over Fernandina Beach (7-2 overall) kept the streak intact.

“I keep telling them to keep competing and keep doing the little things right,” said Persinger. “We’ve had some letdowns in the fifth and sixth innings of some games earlier, but we are learning to not give games away late in the game.”

In the Fernandina Beach Spring Break Classic on Friday, a game Persinger scheduled off a phone call from Pirates coach Thomas Purvis, who had lost a team in his annual tournament. Fernandina Beach had won two games of the tournament by scores of 8-0 and 10-0 with the Pirates outscoring their opponents 73-6 since a 2-1 loss on March 3 to unbeaten Bishop Kenny.

“We had everyone in town on the break and I thought it would be a good test before our districts,” said Persinger, noting Fernandina Beach was 7-2 overall. “I wanted to keep the team sharp.”

In Ferndandina Beach, the Blue Devils were everything but sharp on a blustery, windy day just miles away from the Atlantic Ocean seabreeze that seemingly only played havoc on Clay’s batting lineup as the Pirates were able to blast Blue Devil starting pitcher Connor Solomon at will with line drive hits reaching the outfield fences for consecutive doubles in Fernandina Beach’s first at-bat that scored the game 1-0.

“In a wind like we saw, fly balls are not helpful,” said Persinger. “We wanted the ball to stay on the ground and make them field hard grounders. I think we had 14 fly balls in the first couple of innings.”

Fernandina Beach exacted no hits into the second inning with a flyout to Solomon being followed by a groundout and a strikeout.

Solomon started finding his zone with two strikeouts in the second inning with Clay hitting three singles (on the ground!), but two lively pick-offs kept the Blue Devils scoreless.

Fernandina Beach came right at Solomon in the third after a walk with a single and two triples pushing the score to 3-0.

In the fourth, Clay got their bats rolling behind a walk to Chase Holman, a Solomon single and a error on a choppy grounder to third by Austin Burke. Tyler Spence would slice a right field single for two runs. A sacrifice bunt from Kevin Jackson moved Burke to third and Spence to second before a sacrifice fly from Ken Burke scored Austin Burke. Andrew Yarbrough hit an RBI shot to right field and Clay took a 4-3 lead.

Solomon settled in and struck out two batters in the fourth.

Austin Burke came in in the fifth and closed the game.

Clay returns to district play with a set of two-day doubleheaders coming with Orange Park, Menendez, Ridgeview and Ponte Vedra between March 29 and April 20.