Palo Alto's Austin Poore had hit a cold snap. He was hitless in his previous six at-bats heading into Wednesday's game at Wilcox.
But Poore snapped out of it against the Chargers, going 3-for-4 with a home run as the Vikings won an important league game against Wilcox, 8-5.
Palo Alto (14-8 overall, 9-2 league) holds a one-game lead over both Wilcox (16-7, 8-3) and Homestead (12-10, 8-3) in the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League De Anza standings.
"I was kind of slumping," Poore said. "But then I got one to fall in in the first inning and I was hoping that would be a slump buster."
It was. Palo Alto was leading 2-1 with one out in the third inning when Poore hit a shot over the fence in center field to extend a lead the Vikings never surrendered.
"It was a fastball over the plate," Poore said. "Our coach (Erick Raich) tells us to hunt fastballs. I thought the guy might have a play on it, but then I guess the wind carried it."
Said Raich: "He's a hard-working kid and slumps aren't going to last very long for him. He's mechanically sound at the plate."
So inspired was teammate Eric Feldstein that he immediately muscled up and hit a ball almost to the exact same spot as Poore, except that it fell short of the fence for an out. No matter. Rowan Thompson scored later in the inning after singling and stealing two bases, including home plate on the front end of a double steal to make it 4-1.
Wilcox scored two runs in the third to close to within 4-3, but Palo Alto added insurance in the fifth on a run-scoring single by Austin Kron and in the sixth on an RBI single by Feldstein and a bases-loaded walk to Kron.
It wasn't the way Wilcox coach Paul Rosa wanted to open the Chargers' two-game set with Paly which concludes with a game Friday at Palo Alto.
"It was a tough way to start (the home and home)," Rosa said. "Our backs are to the wall now. We need a split to be tied for first, so it's do or die."
Despite the victory, Paly's Raich was not completely satisfied.
"I'm glad we won, but we didn't play an exceptional game. We need to do a better job pitching and on defense. The last few weeks we've found ways to lose games and (this time) we grinded it out and found a way to win."
Wilcox kept plugging away and scored two runs in the seventh, with the big blow being an RBI double by Patrick Tolbert. The Chargers got the tying run to the plate with two out, but relief pitcher Rohit Ramkumar struck out the final batter.
Poore and Feldstein both had three hits for Palo Alto and Michael Strong had two. Lorenzo Martinez and Stephen Jaramillo had two hits each for Wilcox.
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John Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@Prep2Prep.com and followed on Twitter @PrepCat
