RUMFORD – Gilman Electric kept hitting the snooze alarm for the first two innings of Saturday’s American Legion Zone III doubleheader with Northern Oxford County.

Once the visitors awoke, though, no lead was safe for their hosts.

Tyler Merchant’s two-run homer in the third inning knocked Gilman out of its slumber to overcome an early 5-0 hole and pull out an 11-9 win in Game 1. Gilman then erased a 2-0 deficit in Game 2 with a 7-2 victory to complete the sweep at an overcast Hosmer Field.

“It’s a long drive (to Rumford) coming off a Friday night and it’s summer vacation,” Merchant said. “We had to get going somehow. Coach (Walter Cary) kind of got on us about it.”

Merchant led the Gilman offense by going 5-for-7 on the day with three runs driven in and four runs scored. The former Poland Regional High School star is playing about eight games a week this summer between his Legion and Twilight League duties, and his swing is showing the benefits of repetition.

“It’s good for me for Twilight because it’s a lot harder pitching,” he said. “Then I come here I see the ball a lot better and I just focus on my swing here more than anything. It seemed to work out today.”

Nick Douglass added to the offense with four hits, three RBIs and three runs scored in the twinbill. Jake Pelletier had four hits and drove in three runs and picked up the complete game win in the first game. Kyle Mullins tossed a complete game five-hitter in the second game.

“We weren’t awake when it started, but we got it going,” said Cary, whose team was coming off of a loss to the upstart Swasey-Torrey squad on Thursday. “Pel needed a little time to loosen up, but he definitely got enough work that game. And Kyle threw great.”

In Game 1, Northern Oxford County plated five unearned runs in the first two innings off of Pelletier. Alex Gagnon and Justin Staires each drove in a run and Matt Laubauskas ripped a two-run single to make it 5-0.

Merchant got Gilman (5-1) on the board by sending an 0-1 offering from Connor Blais over the left field fence to make it 5-2 in the third.

“It was a curve ball,” Merchant said. “He just kind of hung it at my knees and I just took it out. It already had the spin for me.”

Dartanian Bourget (3-for-4, three RBIs in Game 1) made it 5-3 with an RBI single. Gagnon drove in another run to double-up Gilman in the fourth, but Gilman tied it in the fifth on back-to-back doubles by Merchant and Douglass, a wild pitch and an RBI single by Travis Linehan.

Northern Oxford County (3-2) reclaimed the lead with three runs in the bottom of the frame on run-scoring singles from Laubauskas and Staires. Staires, who relieved Blais in the midst of Gilman’s fifth-inning rally, was victimized in the sixth by an RBI single from Pelletier and a two-run single by Bourget.

Merchant added insurance with a run-scoring single in the seventh and Pelletier (7 IP, 7 H, 4 ER, 9 K, 6 BB, 2 HBP) breezed through the final two innings to pick up the win.

“To be brutally honest, we were 3-0 coming into today doing nothing but goofing around,” said Northern Oxford coach Ryan Palmer. “Only half my team has taken this season seriously so far, and today it came back to bite us in the rear end. There’s no way we should have let that first game get away.”

Northern Oxford County also got a little complacent in Game 2 after Laubauskas’ two-run homer put them up 2-0 in the first. Mullins (7 IP, 4 K, 0 BB) faced only one threat after that inning, a two-on, one out jam in the fifth that he wiggled out of by getting the top two hitters in NOC’s order, Derek Daley and John Smith, to pop out.

Gilman took the lead in the second on an RBI single by Eric Picard and a two-run double by Douglass. Three NOC errors led to two unearned runs in the fifth on Pelletier’s two-run single, and Gilman added another run in the seventh on Trey Ouellette’s RBI ground out.

For Northern Oxford County, Laubauskas had four hits and drove in five runs, while Staires finished with three hits on the day.