The Pike Patriots rebounded from a tough game Saturday with an 18-8 marathon win over Abbeville Christian on Monday.

“It was marathon baseball today,” said Patriots head coach Allen Ponder. “Pretty sure both teams were down to their last arms trying to save what we have for our area game tomorrow. It was a slugfest.”

After a tough loss to the same Abbeville team Saturday, Ponder liked what he saw on Monday.

“We wanted to rebound after a tough loss,” Ponder said. “We wanted to come back and have a strong performance heading into a big area game with Monroe. We swung the bats better and played good defense. I was proud of the way we bounced back.”

Hunter Jones led the attack for the Patriots, finishing with three doubles. Reed Jinright had a big double in the first inning. Murphy Renfroe, Reed Johnson and Sawyer Mackenzie all had key hits for the Patriots.

“We wanted to come in with a better approach in the batter’s box,” Ponder said. “We came back and took a round of batting practice yesterday and concentrated on trying to hit fastballs. We did a much better job today laying off the off speed pitches and hitting fastballs.”

Hayes Lee pitched the first three innings for the Patriots and Adam Grice pitched the remaining four innings.

“When Adam came in, we build a five- or six-run lead so we wanted him to come in and throw strikes. We wanted them to put the ball in play and he did a good job at throwing strikes for us.

The Lady Patriots also picked up a win on Monday, defeating Abbeville 8-7 in eight innings.

The Lady Patriots found themselves down 6-0 after two innings of play. The Patriots scored three runs in the bottom of the third inning and tacked on an another run in the fourth to make it 6-4. In the bottom of the seventh, Sam Yarbrough hit her 12th homerun of the season to close the gap to one run. Freshman Mallory Clifton tied the game with a single up the middle with two outs to send the game into extras. Abbeville scored in the top of the eight, but the Patriots won the game when Bailey Rushing hit a single to the left side.

Yarbrough finished the game 2-5, while Rushing finished 3-4 with two runs scored and two runs batted in.

Both the softball and baseball teams will kick of area play later this afternoon when they take on Monroe Academy.