South Whidbey used a four-run seventh inning to come from behind and defeat the visiting Coupeville High School baseball team 10-9 Friday, March 21.

The win helped the Falcons prevent a sweep by Coupeville, which won the first two games, in the three-game series.

South Whidbey jumped on sophomore CJ Smith, who was making his first start for the Wolves, for three runs in the first.

Coupeville got one back in the third when Aaron Trumbull doubled and scored on Kurtis Smith’s single.

The Wolves pushed to the lead with an eight-run fifth when they combined three hits with five walks and an error. Morgan Payne ripped a two-run single and Josh Bayne a bases-clearing double to highlight the uprising.

With a 9-5 lead, Wade Schaef, who relieved CJ Smith, cruised until the Falcons scored a single run in the sixth.

With Ben Etzell now pitching, the Wolves made several mental errors, according to coach Willie Smith, to allow the Falcons to rally in the seventh. A two-out, two-run single won it for South Whidbey.

“We didn’t make any physical errors but we just weren’t as focused as we needed to be,” coach Smith said.

“Although we lost, we did take the series and we had a lot of good things happen over the past three games,” he added. “We still have some work to do as we struck out far too much today, mostly looking, and we still need to be able to put a team away when we have them on the ropes, but I feel like we put ourselves in a good position league-wise and the areas we need to work on are definitely areas which we can fix.”

“I felt that CJ settled in and Wade came in and did a nice job in relief.”

Bayne finished 3-for-4 with a double and three RBI, and Trumbull went 3-for-4 with a double and two runs.

Coupeville (2-1) plays two non-league games on the road this week, going to Concrete (1-2) at 4 p.m. Thursday, March 27, and Nooksack Valley (1-2) at 1 p.m. Saturday, March 29.