BOW – With just five games remaining in their regular season, the Falcons desperately needed a win on Monday to get back to .500, and win they did – 6-3 over rival Merrimack Valley.

Bow (6-6) jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the second inning on an RBI single from Jake Reardon (2-for-2, walk), and then expanded the lead the following inning when Calen Smith hit a Little League homer (technically a triple and an E9) that also drove in Cam Evans. The Falcons added two more in the fifth on a safety squeeze and a balk.

The Pride (3-10) plated two in the top of the sixth courtesy of a two-run single from Dylan Garvin and cobbled together a rally in the top of the seventh trailing 6-2 but added just one more run.

Here are three takeaways from Monday’s double local action:

It wasn’t the prettiest, but the Falcons did what they had to do to take care of business

Coming off a rough week losing two of three games, Bow needed to start its penultimate week of the regular season on the right foot. While it wasn’t the most efficient brand of baseball – MV outhit Bow 10-6 and the Falcons committed three errors – situational hitting came through at the right time.

In Bow’s 8-4 loss to John Stark on Saturday, the Falcons left 17 runners on base. On Monday, they squandered fewer of those opportunities.

“We had a couple of really nice hits today in spots with runners in scoring position,” Bow head coach Ben Forbes said. “A couple of miscues that made it so that we were able to grab a couple extra ones too, so that was nice.”

Ethan Gray spotted his pitches effectively

Over 5.2 innings, the senior right-hander scattered six hits, allowed two unearned runs, walked two and struck out six. Most impressive, in his coaches eyes: the ability to locate his pitches.

“He kept the free passes to a minimum – not hitting kids and not walking guys,” Forbes said. “That was a good start for him, and that was super important to be able to go out and just not give them a ton of free passes because they hit the ball a little bit today.”

With MV’s 10 hits, a few more walks or hit batters could’ve turned the game in the Pride’s favor. But Gray, along with Peyton Larrabee, Dillan Abbate and Zach Cross combined to finish the job.

“We needed this week to start off on a positive note,” Forbes said. “We're going to Laconia on Wednesday, another win that we need. We got back to .500 today, and we'd like to jump out ahead of it a little bit. We've got a tough game on Friday against Plymouth, and we've got a couple more tough ones next week. Very important that we were able to take a win that I think we should have had today.”

MV drops 10th game of the year but not without a fight

From its first game of the season against Pembroke through Monday’s loss one common theme has persisted for the Pride: the inability to deliver with runners in scoring position. Against Bow, MV had four innings with multiple runners on base but scored in only two of them.

The Pride certainly made the Falcons sweat in the seventh when the tying run reached first, but Garvin’s pop up to first quelled the threat.

“We haven't had the one guy say, ‘I'm going to drive in the run,’ so everybody's kind of looking around figuring out who the guy's going to be, and right now it hasn't been many of them,” MV head coach Sean Wheeler said. “We just haven't done the job this year, so that's the focus for us every day the rest of the year.”

Despite staring down a 3-10 record, Wheeler’s still pleased with the work his players continue to put in.

“This whole season, it hasn't been lack of effort, it hasn't been lack of fight, it's just been lack of the big timely hit,” he said. “We haven't gotten the hit that we needed with runners in scoring position. Can't ask for anything more from this group. Hard-working group that I enjoy being around. It's just, we gotta put runners across the plate and keep working at it.”

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