SOUTH TAHOE - Sierra League-leading Douglas realized in the second inning Thursday that South Tahoe wasn't a club to take lightly.
The Vikings built a 4-1 lead and senior pitcher Jason Winslow was keeping them off balance with his curveball.
The Tigers delivered the game-changing blow an inning later, though, scoring nine times to cruise to a 14-8 baseball victory at Todd Fields.
"I was highly impressed with (the Vikings). They hit the ball hard," said Douglas coach John Glover. "We scored runs in spurts, and that's the way games have gone for us lately."
Tigers' senior Jordan Hadlock blasted a three-run homer and freshman Cameron Van Winkle slashed a two-run single during the decisive third inning.
"He happened to hang me a curveball, and I got a piece of it," Hadlock said of his fifth homer of the season.
The two teams combined for 33 hits - 17 by the winners.
Douglas improved to 11-2 in the Sierra League, while the Vikings dropped to 3-10.
"It was kind of bittersweet," said STHS skipper Matt Tillson. "Yeah we played a good game and we played well enough where we could have won, but at the same time we want the W.
"We know we can play with these guys. We know we can play with any team in our league."
Van Winkle tripled and scored in the fourth inning, and the Tigers added some insurance in the seventh on back-to-back triples by Tanner Thomas and Tim Rudnick.
Van Winkle moved to the mound after a one-out single by Rick Norlie in the fifth and cooled off the Viking bats until the final inning. Michael Whalin pitched 4 1/3 innings to earn the victory. He gave up eight hits and six runs.
The Vikings led at home for the first time this season by scoring three runs in the first inning. A double by Otto Trebotich and a single by Matt Marsh launched the inning. Gary Prescott plated Trebotich with a sacrifice fly.
Whalin hit the next two batters, setting up Winslow's two-run single.
Hadlock got one of the runs back with a RBI single in the second.
Singles by Kyle DiGrande, Trebotich and Prescott, however, restored the Vikings' three-run lead in the bottom of the inning, 4-1. The Vikings might have led by more but DiGrande was tagged out by Hadlock on an unsuccessful suicide squeeze.
"That woke us up. Sometimes you need something like that to wake a team up,
and I guess that was it today," Hadlock said.
Douglas sent 13 batters to the plate in the nine-run third, sending the Vikings to their 10th straight division defeat.
"(An inning like that) is always going to put you down, but we learned to goback up," Prescott said.
Marsh, the Vikings' third pitcher, kept the Tigers on 11 runs from the fourth through the sixth innings. But the Tigers finally figured him out in the seventh with the long balls by Thomas and Rudnick.
"I didn't see anything wrong with that game. We just had one bad inning. If we didn't have it, we would have been in it," Trebotich said.
For Douglas, Hadlock was a double short of the cycle with four RBI, Jeff Crozier was 3 for 3 with two walks; Thomas 2-for-5, Tyler Hoelzen 2-for-4, Van Winkle 2-for-4 with two runs scored and Beau Davis 2-for-4.
For the Vikings (7-18 overall), Trebotich was a homer short of the cycle with three runs scored, Prescott 3 for 3 with two RBI, Marsh 2-for-4, Ivan Trebotich 2-for-4, Winslow 2-for-2 with two RBI and DiGrande 2-for-3.
The two teams will complete their three-game series with a doubleheader Saturday at Todd Fields. The first pitch is at 10 a.m.
"I want to get one from them," Otto Trebotich said.
Douglas won the JV game, 12-2.