By JOHNNY PEPPO

Sports Editor

RESE RVE – It’s come down to a pressure cooker for teams from East St. John and Destrehan once again as the district race has the two baseball squads set to square off in back-to-back 5-5A games to see which Wildcat team will take the runner-up seed.

Wins this weekend by both schools set the stage for the showdown as DHS topped Hahnville 5-3 and ESJ got by West Jefferson 8-4. That puts Destrehan and East St. John both at 7-3 in district play. Since ESJ won the first meeting between the two teams, they will need one more to own advantage.

&#8220Looking at the schedule, we finish the season against Destrehan with two-in-a-row,” said ESJ Head Coach Ryan Sims in a mid-season prediction. &#8220These two schools have history playing against each other and it’ll be right before the playoffs, so a lot will be riding on it. Look for a good game for those two.”

And ESJ’s Saturday’s win over West Jeff didn’t come easy. Trailing 2-0 through four innings, East St. John had to put together a rally when Steven Haniford singled and brought Johnny Owen up to the plate. He promplty tripled to put the Wildcats on the scoreboard and made his way home on a follow up triple by Renauldo Young. Young then made his way home on a passed ball to put ESJ in the lead. Davarian Ursin added to that with another RBI before West Jeff could get out of the inning.

Freshman Brighton Trepagnier was credited with the win on the mound for the Wildcats, striking out four through his three innings of play.

The victory kept ESJ within range of Destrehan, despite the DHS win over Hahnville Saturday where Hunter Tyree threw a four-hitter and Reni Weber doubled in the fifth to score three runs for the winning margin.

That sets up a showdown that was scheduled to begin Tuesday of this week. But due to deadline constraints, the results of that game were unavailable as of press time.

The first game between the two teams went in favor of ESJ back on April 3 in Destrehan. In that one, the visiting team needed a five-run burst in the fourth inning to take a lead while Haniford got the start at pitcher.

Haniford is back up in the rotation for this week’s games, as is Brandon Trant for Thursday’s meeting. Corwin Brown will also be someone to keep an eye on as he is looking to break the 40 hit mark before the regular season comes to a close. He has ranked among the region’s top hitters, batting .540 through 63 at-bats for 26 RBIs.

Destrehan comes in with strong offense as well, boasting five batters with averages of .420 or higher. Reni Weber, who holds the top batting average in the region with a .580, and Juan Watkins have more than 80 hits between them. Watkins has taken the plate more than 85 times as of last Thursday and leads the region in RBIs with 41.

The baseball playoff brackets are set to be announced next week with the playoffs scheduled to begin on Tuesday.