The Vero Beach Fighting Indians baseball team won the first game of the Class 7A, Region 3 finals Friday night 9-4 against the Park Vista Cobras, closing in on the chance to compete in the state semifinals.
Though it feels good to go up 1-0 in the series, head coach Bryan Rahal said he has seen this before. Vero Beach won 10-3 over the Cobras in game one of last season’s finals only to drop the next two contests.
“When you win a game and you’re up 1-0 it’s a good feeling,” Rahal said. “But we were here last year as well. So they’re a great team, great program, well-coached. They’ve been there before. So it feels good, but for about a minute. Now it’s back to work and getting ready for (Saturday).”
Both teams will return to Vero Beach’s home field at 1 p.m. Saturday for the second game. If needed, a third game will be held immediately afterward in the best-of-three series.
The Fighting Indians were bolstered by a six-run bottom of the fourth inning that ballooned their 2-1 lead to 8-1 and came immediately after leaving the bases full of Cobras in the top half.
“That was a good momentum swing,” Rahal said. “I thought we had good at-bats during that inning. I was proud of our kids for the focus and pitch by pitch and at-bat by at-bat that we kind of went in that inning. We got some stuff done, executed a few things.”
Caleb Wood then provided some late-game fireworks, hitting a home run in the sixth inning to push the Fighting Indian lead to 9-1.
“It felt great. We’ve been practicing every single day, putting the time and work in. It’s great to come out here and show what we’ve been doing,” Wood said. “We had a great game today. There’s some things we need to work on for (Saturday)…just staying in the game the whole way…all seven innings.”
The winner of the series will advance to the state semifinals which will be held in Fort Myers next week.
Photos by Nick Samuel
