The River Ridge baseball team made a seventh-inning rally to take a late lead against Bellarmine in Tacoma Friday night, but the Lions tied the game in the bottom of the seventh and walked it off in the eighth to win 5-4.
Bellarmine collected two runs off River Ridge starting pitcher Conner Kramer in the first inning and another off an RBI triple by Aaron Barnhart in the third to take a 3-0 lead.
The Hawks, with Aaron Leu on the mound, escaped a bases-loaded jam in the fifth as the senior right-hander struck out Colin Pattison with two outs to end the frame.
Neither team scored until the seventh inning, when River Ridge loaded the bases with one out. Kaiee Kopp walked with the bases loaded to bring Kellen Lentz home, and Leu came up clutch, saving the game with a bases-clearing double on an 0-2 pitch with two outs to give River Ridge a 4-3 lead.
But Bellarmine didn’t go away quietly. With Lentz on the bump, the Lions led off the inning with a walk before Lentz earned a strikeout and a popout. Another walk put two runners on, and Pattison stepped up to the plate and delivered a game-tying single to center field to send the game into extra innings.
River Ridge went down in order in the top of the eighth. Lentz walked the first two batters in the bottom of the eighth, and after Barnhart advanced to third on a passed ball, he scored the game-winning run on a Calvin Dossett sacrifice pop out to second base.
“I love that they didn’t quit. In previous years, that was a game we would have folded early when we got down, but they battled all the way through,” River Ridge head coach Ben Rood said. “That’s something we can build on the rest of the year.”
River Ridge (1-1, 1-1 Puget Sound League) will wrap up non-league play Saturday afternoon on the road against Yelm before hosting Gig Harbor on Monday, March 23.
