Tuesday afternoon, the Deerfield Beach Bucks traveled to Parkland for a district match-up against the district-leading Stoneman Douglas Eagles. The Bucks have been struggling as of late and were riding a season-long four-game losing streak heading into the game. On the other hand, Stoneman Douglas has rattled off seven straight victories, including an 8-0 victory over the Bucks on February 26, and were looking to extend that streak to eight with a second win against Deerfield.

The Eagles started freshman RHP Kyle Yeoward on the mound, for his first start on the season, up against the Bucks’ senior Conner Kelly. Stoneman Douglas was able to ride Yeoward for six innings to an 8-2 lead before senior Jeremy Szosda came in to close in the seventh, needing just three batters to get as many outs.

In the bottom of the first inning, Conner Kelly put Colton Welker and Chad McDaniel on base after hitting Welker and walking McDaniel. With two outs, Kelly just needed to put John McKenna away to get out of the inning, but McKenna had other plans. McKenna took Kelly’s pitch to deep left field for a three-run home run, his fourth on the year, to put the Eagles on the board. John Miskowski flew out to left field in the next at-bat, but the damage was already done.

In the top of the third inning, the Bucks threatened to score with runners on first and third. Conner Kelly came up to bat looking to cut into the lead, but Kelly grounded out to Yeoward who made it out of the inning unscathed. However, the Bucks were able to end the drought in the fourth inning when they brought in two runs to cut the lead to just two runs.

Rafael Santos led off the fourth inning with a single up the middle and stole second during Trent Youstin’s at-bat. Later in that at-bat Youstin hit a sac-fly to right field and Santos was able to advance to third on the tag-up. Peter Robinson came up to bat with Santos on third and put the ball in between the shortstop and second baseman, driving in the first run for the Bucks and putting himself on first with just one out. Keshawn Herring came up to bat next and dropped a ball short of the center fielder to set up first and third. Herring stole on the next pitch, resulting in a pickle that ended with Robinson getting tagged out at home and Herring scoring all the way from first, to make the game 4-2 in favor of the Eagles. Problems continued for the Eagles when a routine fly ball dropped in the infield, the inning ended on a failed steal attempt by the Bucks and the Eagles went into the bottom of the fourth hanging on to their two-run lead.

Trailing 5-2, Deerfield brought in Zach Clark to relieve Kelly in the fifth. The powerful Eagles offense made short work of Clark, with yet another three-run inning to extend their lead to six runs.

The Bucks brought in Kyle Galinat in the sixth inning to relieve Clark after the offensive onslaught put on by Stoneman Douglas in the fifth. Clark made it out of the inning with no mishaps, other than hitting Douglas’ Colton Welker in the helmet. Welker was hit earlier in the game, but despite those two occurrences, he finished the game with two singles and three runs scored.

To close out the game in the seventh inning, the Eagles brought in Jeremy Szosda, for his first appearance of the season. Szosda sat down all three batters that he faced in the inning and the Eagles continued their dominance within the district with an 8-2 victory over Deerfield.

Thursday, the Eagles will put their undefeated district record (6-0) on the line against the visiting Coral Springs Colts, who are fresh off of a 2-1 victory over the Monarch Knights.