Staff photo / Brian Yauger Mineral Ridge junior Gavin Harding slides into home during Friday’s game against Brookfield at Brookfield Community Park.

BROOKFIELD — This season, Mineral Ridge has been the victim of some bad bounces and missed opportunities.

Coach Anthony Ragozine and the Rams hope that Friday’s 12-5 victory over Brookfield is the beginning of their luck turning around.

“We ran into a little bad luck at-bat wise (this season.) When the bases are loaded, we hit a shot, and it goes right to somebody. That’s kind of where we’ve been,” Ragozine said. “Things just haven’t kind of fallen our way. Today, they did a little bit. Hopefully we can build on that momentum. It was nice today to find a couple gaps and score some runs.”

Heading into the fifth inning, the game was tied at 4 after a Josh Rankin double scored two Warriors.

But with their next at-bat, the Rams took a lead they wouldn’t surrender.

Mineral Ridge scored the next nine runs across the next two innings, including a hit from junior Gavin Harding that scored two.

As impressive of a performance as the bats were for the Rams, their defense put on a show of its own.

Right fielder Nick Anderson helped throw out a runner at home plate late in the game, and catcher Jackson Geddes kickstarted a 2-6-3 double play

Mineral Ridge was experimenting with positions and may have found a winning formula.

“We kind of mixed up the lineup a little bit, just to get some guys out there,” Ragozine said. “I think that was Nick’s second or third time in right field all season. We’re probably gonna see a little bit more of him out there. Just kind of mixing things up, changing things up to hopefully build some momentum here. We’ve been pretty solid defensively all year. It just hasn’t had the outcomes we wanted. Our pitching sometimes has been a struggle, but today, that was Andrew Gillie’s first game of the season pitching, and he came out and pitched his butt off.”

The loss brings Brookfield to 3-10 on the season.

“To be honest, our morale is a lot higher than a lot of 3-10 teams would be,” Warriors coach Brendan Matig said. “We’ve lost six games by two runs or less. This one got away from us. They capitalized with runners in scoring position, and we didn’t. But we’re just gonna keep battling. We’ve got injured arms. We’re short on pitching right now. It is what it is. We’re gonna keep battling. We’re gonna keep pushing through, and we’re looking towards the playoffs and when we can get some of these arms healthy.”

With the postseason looming, the hope is that Brookfield can string together some wins.

“We play with heart and we play with passion and we play with energy,” Matig said. “We’ve got to put that together for a full seven innings. We’ve got to be clean in the field. We’ve got to throw strikes, and we’ve got to be one-through-nine to hit the ball consistently and punch runs across when teams give us opportunities.”

The Warriors play Newton Falls on Monday and Tuesday.

Mineral Ridge (6-6) hosts Campbell on Monday.