Staff photo / Brian Yauger Boardman’s Caleb Satterfield throws a pitch Friday night against Warren G. Harding at Boardman High School.

BOARDMAN — Boardman fell into an early hole after four errors turned into two surrendered runs, but the Spartans tightened up, the bats woke up and they dominated their way to a 9-2 AAC victory over Harding.

Boardman’s record improves to 8-14 this season.

Once the third inning rolled around, the game started to shift.

“I think it just came down to them just feeling more confident about themselves,” Boardman coach Joe Gabriel said. “Once they started to open some things up a little bit, they kind of were able to exhale a little bit.”

After a handful of errors early, the Spartans were nearly perfect in the field from that point on. The mistakes were uncharacteristic, but it was something they recovered from quickly.

“One thing we’ve been really good at all year has been on the defensive end of things,” Gabriel said. “We’d like to obviously continue that going into the postseason.”

With that defensive turnaround, came an offensive explosion.

“We’ve been on the wrong end of a lot of close games this year for us, so it was nice to get back on the winning end of it tonight,” Gabriel said. “It was good to get some bounces and it was good to see Landon (Whippo) pitch well for us going into the tournament next week.”

With a battle with Nordonia on the horizon, the Spartans are looking for consistency. With that said, their performance Friday was promising.

“I think we just need to be more consistent,” Gabriel said. “Hitting the ball. Keep hitting the ball like we did today and just keep getting better with that.”

The loss sinks Harding to 8-13 on the season. It’s been an up and down year so far, and Friday’s game kind of encapsulated the season. Solid pitching combined with some unlucky bounces.

“We’ve had a lot of ups and downs, played well, had some tough losses, some extra inning games,” Raiders coach Andrew Burnett said. “We haven’t had a lot of luck. It’s been like that all year. We’ve had some injuries, but they fight.

“We pitched well again, but there were a couple of balls we needed to catch, a couple of plays we needed to make, then it’s a whole new game. Just how things have gone. A couple bloops they hit and nobody’s there, we hit a couple hard balls right at them. I think it was the fifth inning, we have guys on first and third, Caden (Maffit) is up and he hits a line drive right to the fence and they had a kid standing there to catch it. He made a great play on it, there were just a few plays they made that we didn’t.”

Harding opens its postseason with Mentor on Tuesday. Before that, they face Jefferson this morning at 11 a.m. and Mathews on Monday to get some extra prep for the tournament.

The 26th-seeded Spartans travel to Macedonia on Tuesday to take on the 18th-seeded Nordonia Knights. First pitch is set for 5 p.m.

byauger@tribtoday.com