By TIM GUERCIO

The Natchez Democrat

VIDALIA — The Vidalia Vikings baseball team won both games of a doubleheader Saturday against the Beekman Charter School Tigers at Cliff Merritt Memorial Field.

The Vikings won game one 7-6, in eight innings on a walk-off base hit against the Tigers.

Dom Harveston got the game-winning hit in the bottom of the eighth inning to win the game for the Vikings.

The Tigers of Bastrop wasted no time as they scored five runs in the top of the first inning. With three walks and two errors the Tigers only needed two singles to get five runs across the plate.

Tristan Weatherly started the game on the mound for Vidalia but didn’t have his best stuff.

Brandon Bozeman was called in from left field to take the mound for the second inning and Weatherly went out to play left field.

Bozeman gave up a run in the second and then shut down the Tigers for the rest of the game.

The Vikings’ defense got tough also. The Tigers scattered ground balls all over the infield, only to see them thrown over to first base for outs.

The Vikings offense slowly manufactured three runs by the end of the third inning to make the score 6-3 and get a little closer.

The Tigers had their top pitcher Brayden Spigner on the mound.

“We told our hitters to put the ball into play,” coach Mike Norris said. “If we could get to Spigner, we could have a chance.”

The Vikings got that chance, too. In the bottom of the last inning still down 6-3 Nick Melton pounded a pitch that went all the way to the fence, running hard the whole way Melton ended up on third with a stand up triple. Ryan Chain then came in to pitch in relief of Spigner.

Next up, C.J. Chatman walked, Weatherly drove Melton in with a double and

Dylan LaPrairie sent one to shallow center to drive in two runs and tie the game at six and send it to extra innings.

Bozeman saw three batters up and sent three batters down in the top of the eighth, which set up the Vikings heroics in the bottom.

Adam Eames in his first at bat of the game singled to left. Bozeman next enabled Eames to steal second and then sacrificed him to third with a long fly ball to right. Next up was the Senior Dom Harveston, who plays hard, and plays heads up baseball all of the time. Harveston went with the pitch and slapped the ball to left field to score Bozeman from third and win the game.

Norris was fast at work in the dugout after game 1 filling out his line up card for game two.

“We need some momentum like this going into the playoffs,” Norris said.

Game two Saturday started off fast for Vidalia as they scored three runs in the first inning, and beat the Tigers again, this time by the score of 15-3.

Nick Melton and Dylan LaPrairie teamed up on the pitchers mound for the Vikings and were able to hold the Tigers to only three runs for the entire game.

Tristan Weatherly had a triple and Melton had a double as the Vikings saw the Tigers run through five pitchers in game two.

With the score 3-2 going into the sixth inning the Vikings got a rally going and scored seven runs to put the game away, they added three more runs in the seventh for the final tally of 15-3.

Playoffs start next week for both of these teams.