Coral Springs Rallies Past Coral Glades

After graduating 13 players and posting big losses to Douglas and Taravella this season, some people might have thought Coral Springs just doesn’t have it this year.

The Colts showed Thursday night that they’re still very much alive with a key 7-3 victory over host Coral Glades in 8A-11.

Coral Springs (5-3, 3-2 district) took advantage of a big fifth inning to overcome a one-run deficit and defeat the Jaguars (5-1, 4-1).

“This game gives them a lot of confidence going into the rest of the district games that we have,” Coral Springs Manager Frank Bumbales said. “It shows we can beat a good team because Glades is a very good team. [The Colts] came out and played as a team today. Everybody was together, and everybody was picking everybody else up. It was a good game.”

Winning pitcher Jordan Barrett said the victory gives the Colts a much-needed shot in the arm.

“It’s definitely going to build us up,” Barrett said. “We competed as a team tonight, and we’ll start doing that more often for every game.”

Colton Smith, who went 3-for-4 with a run and RBI, spoke of the game’s importance.

“It’s a big game. It’s a big district game,” Smith said. “We have two district games next week. It gets us back up right where we want to be.”

Springs broke a scoreless tie in the top of the third when Justin Mixon scored on Tre Dingus’ fiedler’s choice.

Coral Glades came back in the next inning to tie it when pinch-runner Sid Williams came in on Alex Lara’s sacrifice fly. The Jaguars also executed a double-steal to go ahead as Oliver Levine, who was hit by a pitch to get on base, took second and pinch-runner Bryan Keeler raced home.

The Colts took the lead for good in the fifth. Davis Alessio Matt Messina scored on a wild pitch and Alessio came home on an error by the shortstop.

Coral Glades added a run in the fifth as Nick Diaz singled and scored on an error.

Michael Montalvo’s hard-hit base hit up the middle brought home Dingus and Cerullo for a pair on insurance runs

The Colts took advantage of some baserunning mistakes by Glades to prevent the Jaguars from executing.

“We knew they were going to be running,” Bumbales said. “We knew they like to run. So we had to keep it close. Barrett’s got a good move to first base, and we picked the right times to throw over there and we picked them off. They made a couple of baserunning mistakes that hurt them as far as innings go. It took them out of some innings.”

Bumbales also praised Barrett’s pitching to complement the solid defense.

“This is what he’s been doing pretty much all year,” Bumbales said. “He’s a strong pitcher. Tonight he was his usual self. He kept the ball down, kept the ball in the strikezone. He has a lot of movement on his pitches. He was mixing them up pretty well and got people out.”

The win put Springs in third place in the district and moved Glades out of a tie for first with Douglas into second place. Glades can overtake Douglas for the top spot with a win over the Eagles on Tuesday.

Glades Manager Jorge Miranda said his team’s performance Thursday was uncharacteristic.

“We played a very bad baseball game,” Miranda said. “We committed four errors and extended innings, and it came back to hurt us big time. We had two double plays that weren’t turned, and two pitches later, those runners come in to score. That was the difference in the game. The way that we’ve been playing defense was not there tonight. Kudos to [the Colts]. I give them a lot of credit because when we extended the innings for them, they came up with a big hit when they needed to.”

Leave a comment using your facebook account!