BARTRAM TRAIL - The St. Johns Country Day Spartans picked a good night to do some Friday night Bear hunting at Bartram Trail. The Bears, coming off a walk-off win over the Clay Blue Devils, were standing tall. The Spartans just had a 10 inning marathon 3-2 loss against the Oakleaf Knights two nights ago, followed by a bounce-back 7-4 win over the Baldwin Indians the night prior. With both teams primed for the Friday night action, it was a surge first at-bat for the Spartans to put a few runs on the board very early, then follow up with a couple more in the top of the third to roll up five runs, then use a stout defense to hold the Bears from bringing more runs around when Bartram had many opportunities. The Spartans blanking of the Bears in the last four innings allowed them to hold on to the 5-3 victory in the Bear’s back yard.

“Exciting game, but what you have to love about this group is whatever happens, whatever kind of adversity they are dealing with, they find a way to overcome it,” said Assistant Coach Jordan Rooks. “That’s how we’ve been playing the last few games and we haven’t played our best game yet. But they always find a way to be in it and come back to put us in a position to win the games.”

Asked about the 10 inning clash the Spartans faced against the Oakleaf Knights just two nights prior, Rooks said “Early in the season we took the team to Georgia for a tournament. We ended up getting into a dogfight with Mosley. That game tested them and built them up for, hey; we may be in these kinds of games later on. It set the tone to manage games like the Oakleaf game. They were shot the next day; we were all shot. We tell them no matter what, we get to wake up and do it all again. Keep grinding, keep battling. We put it all back together against Baldwin and we kept building off that.”

In the top if the first for the Spartans, it didn’t take but five pitches to walk Kody Daneault, followed up with a single from Kyle Boylston to right field to move Daneault to third. Seth Alford hit a grounder to the shortstop who committed an error allowing Daneault and Boylston to score while Alford sat snuggly on second base. Jacob Thomas was next in the office and produced an RBI single to left field scoring Alford, 3-0.

The Bears answered with a single run of their own in the bottom of the first to bring the scoring to 3-1. After a quick inning of three up, three outs for both squads, it was back to work for the Spartans in the top of the third. Boylston was the first at bat and safely arrived to first thanks to another Bears error. With one out, Jacob Thomas grounded to the pitcher, who committed another error going to second base. The error allowed Alford to sneak through the back door with a errant throw to home plate as Thomas made his way to second, 4-1.

With two outs, Kellen Brown hit a grounder to third base who again errored with an off target throw to first. With the ball on the ground off first base, Henry scored the fifth St. Johns run, 5-1. The Bears could do no better than two more runs in the bottom of the third bringing the game to 5-3.

“It did become a chess match,” said Rooks. “Skylar (Skylar Sanford, the Bears stating pitcher) is the dude. He’s the real deal. When you’re facing a quality arm like that, and you have a good approach, they find a way to work around that approach and that’s exactly what they did later in the game.”

With a two run lead, the Spartans went into heavy defensive mode. After Jacob Thomas went four innings up on the hill earning the win by giving up only three hits, three runs, three walks, and six strikeouts, Jeffrey Henry came in for two innings with a single hit, one walk, and two strikeouts. Trevor Bradley earned the save facing three batters, giving up zero hits.

“Overall, our defense played well,” said Rooks. “Some really good plays in the infield; our outfield played a solid game; our right fielder ran a ball down;just really good play.”

When the Bears had a runner on first and third late in the game, an attempted late steal from first base to divert attention from third base never had a chance to work. “All of these kids are locked in. We preach to them, even when not on the field, they need to be in the dugout locked in on something.”

As the fake out was attempted, at least 10 players shouted the play as the runner was thrown out attempting to go home. In the closing innings, the Bears would go on to put two runners on in the fourth, two in the fifth, get blanked in the sixth, and go three up, three out in the bottom of the seventh in the 5-3 loss.