Brunswick will enter the Eastern A postseason with an 8-8 mark and the No. 8 seed in the Heal Point Standings, giving the Dragons a home preliminary game next week, likely against Lewiston. Oxford Hills, at 9-7, will likely be the No. 5 seed.

In Wednesday’s game, the Dragons found the holes, with five bloop singles and several hard-hit line drives. In all, Brunswick pounded out a season-high 15 hits, each one a single.

“I just don’t know,” Brunswick coach Luke Potter said about his team’s change of fortune. “All season we haven’t gotten the ball into the gap, gotten the good hop. Today we were playing a really good baseball team, and we just found holes. We got the bases loaded and the hits. We earned this one.”

“Nothing went our way,” Oxford Hills coach Shane Slicer said. “They hit the ball hard, line drives that we just didn’t knock down.”

Brunswick jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the first as Elias Henze scored on a John Parker fielder’s choice ground ball.

Finding the gaps

In the second, the Dragons picked up a line-drive single by Josh Goddard, followed by three consecutive bloop hits from Pearson Cost, Thomas Hanson and Cam Berry for a 2-0 lead. Vikings starter Blake Slicer (one-plus inning, seven hits, two runs, one strikeout) was relieved by Will Frank, who escaped further damage after a nice double play turn by second baseman Brayden Bean.

Meanwhile, Brunswick ace Parker was in full control. He allowed only a single each to Brady LaFrance and Aiden Heikkinen, along with a walk to Jake Beauchesne through four innings, and his offense put the game out of reach in the fourth.

Cost, Hanson and Berry singled to open the big Brunswick inning to load the bases. Oxford Hills defense was pulled in. After an error scored a run, Lowell’s base hit to left made it a 5-0 contest.

“Any other game we wouldn’t have done that, but I wasn’t sure if we were going to get many runs off of Parker,” said coach Slicer. “They hit a flare over our shortstop’s head that we likely would have caught at normal depth.

Zach Meggison’s single loaded the bases again for the hosts, and a sacrifice fly by Will Bessey scored the sixth Brunswick run, with Cost’s third hit and a second Vikings error making for an 8-0 contest.

“This was our break-through, and we just need to keep having fun,” said Lowell, who was 2-for-4. “I think we can go pretty far if we keep playing the way we played today. We just played our best baseball all year against a very good team.”

“We felt great as soon as we got our bats going,” said Cost after his 3-for-3 afternoon. “Behind John we haven’t hit the ball well, but today we did. We have nine seniors and everyone played. A lot of us got hits. We just played well.”

“We were locked in at five, but this one is a head-scratcher,” Slicer said. “We have to get our confidence back, but how do you do that? We need to go back and get our fundamentals. We are not playing well in any aspect of the game, and that is tough entering the playoffs.”

Oxford Hills scored its lone run in the sixth when Emery Chickering singled, moved to second on a passed ball, to third on a Parker wild pitch and to home on an RBI ground ball by LaFrance.

But, Parker finished things off from there, ending with eight strikeouts, two walks and just four hits allowed on 96 pitches.

“John is a hard guy to get a lot of hits off of in a row, and when he is on, he has a curveball, fastball, and is able to locate,” said Potter, who hopes his squad can ride the momentum into the playoffs. “Hopefully baseball is on our side. We just have to play good all the way around, something that is our goal.”

Berry, Meggison and Hanson each had two hits for Brunswick.

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