By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

LYMAN — Ocean Springs rallied past home-standing Harrison Central Saturday afternoon to maintain its first place status in Region 4-7A play.

The win moves the Greyhounds to a solid 8-1 in the region race with the three game sweep of the Red Rebels, while HCHS drops to 3-6 in the league standings.

In the series finale, OSHS trailed 4-0 entering the fifth frame but immediately responded with three runs in that inning and a single run in each of the final two stanzas to pull out the win.

“It took us down to our last out to scratch the last run across today” second-year OSHS head coach Ryne Long said. “I was proud of our poise and finding a way get ourselves in a position to win late. It’s always tough against those guys. Coach (Neil) Frederic does things the right way, and there’s no question his guys are well-coached and are going to come out and play us tough.”

With the game knotted up at 4-4 entering the top of the seventh stanza, Justin San Miguel led off the inning with a double. Then, two outs later, A.J. Rossi sliced a line drive, RBI-single to center that scored San Miguel with the decisive run.

Harrison Central broke open a scoreless deadlock in the bottom of the fourth with a four run rally that included a double from Kolton Beard, a two-run error of the bat of Parrish Laiche and a Hunter Gollott run-scoring sacrifice fly.

The Greyhounds got three runs right back on an RBI-ground out by Jack Jordan, an RBI-single by Jeremy Korn and Adam Clower reached on an infield error that also plated a run.

Cannon Hensarling’s RBI-sacrifice fly in the sixth tied things up and set the stage for the climactic final frame.

A.J. Arguello had two hits for OSHS.

Clower worked within one out of a complete game on the mound to earn the win, and Colton French registered the last out to get a save. Clower scattered just four hits and struck out five while walking three.

“That was a gutsy performance by Clower on the mound today,” Long added. “We had a bunch of guys contribute all week offensively, today it happened to be Rossi with a huge 2 out hit in the seventh to give us the lead and French coming out of the pen to get a strike out to end the game with the bases loaded was big as well.”

Gullett, the second of three Harrison Central hurlers, suffered the tough-luck loss.

Beard’s double was the big hit for the Red Rebels.

On Friday night, on the heels of a 6-1 win on the road Tuesday night, the home-standing Greyhounds thumped HCHS 10-1.

Tristen Fox continued his solid work as the number two starter for OSHS with five frames of work to earn the win.

Rossi, who finished the final two innings on the mound, also had two hits including a double and drove in a pair of runs. Jordan also had two hits and drove in two runs while San Miguel had two hits including an RBI-double.

Bryan Travis had two hits, including a double, for the Red Rebels while Beard had two hits and drove in a run.

Laiche took the loss.