WINSLOW — If the Winslow High School baseball team’s rally happened in the regular season, it would go down as a nice win. But since the Black Raiders’ 9-7 comeback win over Ellsworth came in the playoffs it goes past the nice win category directly to “did you see that?” status — at least for Winslow players, coaches and fans.

Down 7-3 going into the bottom of the sixth inning, Winslow scored six runs in the sixth inning to take the win. No. 6 Winslow (14-3) will play at No. 3 Oceanside (12-4) in the Eastern Class B quarterfinals on Tuesday. No. 11 Ellsworth finished 6-11.

“We’ve had a lot of solid sixth innings this year. We probably played the worst five innings of our whole season and there wasn’t a guy you saw with two outs, we didn’t give up,” Winslow coach Jesse LaCasse said. “I’ve never seen an effort like that. At that point, you hope the team brings it together, and they did.”

Dylan Hapworth reached base on an error to open the inning. With one out, Alex Berard singled and then Jake Trask reached on an error to score Hapworth. Berard scored on a wild pitch to make it 7-5, and with two outs Taylor Roy bunted for a single.

“As the inning kept going on, I was like, ‘yeah we can do this.’ We showed our true colors today,” Winslow senior Trevor Lovely said.

The Eagles committed their third error of the inning on a Ben Smith grounder to shortstop, and that scored two more runs to tie the game at 7-7. Ellsworth coach Michael Boles asked the umpires to consider calling Roy, who stutter-stepped between second and third base, out for interference, but said he knew that call was unlikely.

“I was hoping. He kind of stopped and danced around. I was trying to see if we could get a call. It was heads up baserunning. It was a smart play on his part,” Boles said.

That brought Lovely to the plate, who singled to score Smith with the go ahead run.

“The only thing on my mind was not to get out,” Lovely said.

Ryan Dubois doubled off the third base bag to score Lovely with an insurance run. Against Hapworth, who came on in relief in the top of the sixth, the Eagles went down in order in the seventh, and the Black Raiders celebrated their win.

Early, it looked as though Ellsworth would have control the entire game. The Eagles scored four runs in the top of the first inning off of the left-handed Lovely, who gave up five hits in the first.

“We weren’t able to make plays, anyone. I messed up a couple times,” Lovely said.

Lovely pitched into the fifth inning, allowing five runs, before Trask took over. Sid St. Peter scored on a passed ball in the fifth, pushing Ellsworth’s lead to 5-3, and the Eagles added two more runs in the sixth on a Nick Bagley hit and an error.

“Trevor’s been solid for us. Lefties, not many are seen in high school. The nice thing for us is (that) we have Trask, who’s a great middle reliever; he has been all season. It’s nice to have Dylan to come in when needed,” LaCasse said.

Winslow got two runs in the first on a Berard double, and Dubois singled to drive in another in the third. The Black Raiders had a chance to tie the game in the third, but the potential tying run was gunned down at the plate. Ellsworth starter Conor Maguire, the Penobscot Valley Conference Player of the Year, pitched well, striking out six with no walks, but was hurt by the Eagles’ spotty defense.

“It’s kind of what costs us in spots most of the games,” Boles said. “Our pitching’s been great, just every now and then we get shaky in the infield.”

Travis Lazarczyk — 861-9242

tlazarczyk@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @TLazarczykMTM

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