While it would have been easy to walk away from a 13-12 loss to Lakewood last Wednesday with the feeling that the jinx was on, the South Whidbey boys stood tall on the Cougars’ diamond two days later and won.

This time around, there was no implosion by the Falcons, as happened when the Cougars erased an 11-2 South Whidbey lead with a 10-run inning on April 30. No, this time, South Whidbey came out to play solid ball.

Though they fell behind 3-1 in the first inning, the Falcons used their finest tools — senior slugger Josh Coleman and sophomore pitcher Stefan Kolbo — to outlast the Cougars over seven innings.

Picking up where he left off after his previous outing against Lakewood, in which he slammed two home runs on a 5-for-5 performance, Coleman blasted another one over the fence to put South Whidbey up in the first Friday. It was the start of another remarkable day for him, though not so much in terms of statistics, but in intimidation. This time around, Coleman was only 2-for-2 as Cougar pitchers chose to intentionally walk him in his other trips to the plate.

The strategy might have worked, had Lakewood been able to produce much offense after the first inning. But that wouldn’t happen, as the Falcons’ Kolbo settled in to pitch scoreless ball until the seventh, when Lakewood picked up an unearned run off a couple South Whidbey miscues.

To tie the game, the Falcons picked up two runs in the third on a Michael Lodell leadoff hit and a Coleman single, which converted to scores when both came home on Cougar fielding errors.

Then in the fifth, Coleman cut the knot as he came home for his third score of the day on an Andrew Mathis single. Andrew Hosmer scored on a fielders choice to bring in the winning run.

Dane Guetlin was the only Falcon other than Coleman to hit for extra bases, smacking a double in the sixth.

The Falcons now sit in eighth place in the North Cascades Conference at 5-9, just one win out of seventh place, which is held by Meridian.