By RYAN ARENA

L’Observateur

RESERVE –East St. John coach Ronald August knows his team is willing to fight in the face of adversity.

But August says the Wildcats need to do a better job of making that fight less of an uphill climb, as rallies have fallen short in each of the last three district games: a 6-5 loss at St. Amant last Tuesday, a 7-5 loss at East Ascension Thursday, and a 17-6 loss at home to East Ascension Saturday.

The Wildcats trailed by at least five runs in each of the three losses.

ESJ (8-15, 0-9) fell behind 6-0 early against East Ascension Saturday but would press back, cutting their deficit to three, 9-6. But that’s as close as ESJ would come, as East Ascension scored a big sixth inning.

“We came back and battled, but everything just fell apart,” said August. “it got away from us.”

Ashton Lewis continued his hot hitting for the Wildcats, going 3 for 4 with three RBIs and a home run. He has five home runs in the last five games.

“He’s hitting it all over the park,” said East St. John coach Ronald August. “He’s seeing the ball really well right now.

“Right now, we feel like any time he’s up to bat, he’s likely to hit it out of the park. We have a lot of confidence in him.”

Andrew Taylor went 2-for-4 with a double and an RBI.

Courtney Freeman started and went two innings, allowing three earned runs on five hits.

“We’re having too many situations where we’ve got two outs and we’re letting them off the hook with an error,” said August. “It’s time to get out of that. We’re not out of the playoff race, there are six games left. But we need to clean up the mistakes and give ourselves a chance.

On Thursday, again the Spartans led 6-0 early after scoring three runs in each of the first two innings. The Wildcats trailed 7-2 after four innings and scored two runs in the sixth and one in the seventh to close, but simply ran out of outs.

Lewis homered and went 2 for 4 with a double and two RBIs. Darnell Lee went 2 for 4.