CRESTVIEW — Friday was another night of winning ugly for the Crestview baseball team as the Bulldogs beat Fort Walton Beach 8-5 in District 2-6A play
Three night after capitalizing on five Niceville errors in a 6-3 win, Crestview managed to scrape together eight runs despite managing just three hits.
"It was an ugly win, but it is a win and we are happy to get it," Crestview coach Tim Gillis said. "I give them a lot of credit for battling back.
"I'm not real happy with the way we finished the game, but ultimately in this league you are happy to get a win."
Walks turned out to be the undoing of Viking starting pitcher Kevin Jones. Jones walked five Crestview batters in a little more than one inning of work and all five of the batters walked came around to score.
By the time Nick Boswell took over Jones with no out in the second inning the Bulldogs were up 4-0 and had the bases loaded.
Jimmy Croussore greeted Boswell with a single to center score Hunter Sullivan and Tate Sweatt. Justin Abdo moved to third on the play and scored as Tyler Henderson delivered a sacrifice fly to right field.
Croussore took third on the sac fly and scored as Dakota Dean grounded out sharply to second base.
The five-run second coupled with a pair of runs the Bulldogs scored in the first turned out to be just enough for Crestview to eek out the win.
Crestview scored an insurance run in the fifth inning as Dean scored from first on a two-out single by Corey Armstrong.
Matt Gillis started the game on the mound for Crestview and gave the Bulldogs four strong innings of one-hit ball to go along with one strike out. Gillis did walk five Viking batters, but was able to work his way out of a couple of jams.
Abdo relieved Gillis in the fifth inning and looked strong in giving up an infield single and striking out a batter in a scoreless inning of work.
But good didn't seem to be good enough for the Bulldogs.
Casey Wehrhahn led off the Viking sixth with a base hit and moved to second on a Joe Guidry sacrifice bunt.
Frazier Shoults reached on an error that moved Wehrhahn to third.
Wehrhahn and Shoults scored on a Darren Hasch triple and Hasch scored on a Abdo wild pitch.
A pair of Bulldog errors came into play again in the seventh inning as the Vikings pushed across a pair of runs off of Trent Zellars, but Zellars worked his way out of a tight spot to strike out Boswell and end the game.
Gillis picked up the win for the Bulldogs and Jones took the loss. Boswell worked six innings in relief and struck out seven Bulldog batters while allowing just two hits.
"We just don't give up," Viking coach Jeremiah Mayville said. "We preach it in the locker room every day. We've got a good group of guys.
"We're young, we've got two seniors. The guy that came in to close it (Boswell) is awesome. He'll play college ball somewhere."
Randy Dickson is the Crestview News Bulletin’s sports editor. Email him at randyd@crestviewbulletin.com, tweet him @BigRandle, or call 682-6524
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Bulldogs hold off Vikings