Relief pitcher Zachary Rossman sprung from the infield dirt at Hartman Park, a blend of relief and intensity written in his eyes.

Moments earlier, with the game-tying run only sixty feet away, Rossman squeezed a popped-up bunt attempt as he tumbled to the ground for the third out of the inning to preserve a 6-5 win for his Bel-West 12-year-old All-Star team. Rossman, who took over for starting pitcher Jack Enger in the fifth inning, twice escaped a sticky situation to help his team to a victory.

With no outs in the fifth and the game tied at four apiece after a Patrick Bowers two RBI double, Rossman struck out three straight batters to get his team to the sixth with the game still tied.

Then after a groundout to begin the top half of the next inning, Henry Pratt was hit by a pitch to put the go-ahead run on board for Bel-West. Two batters later, on the second pitch he saw, Sam Geffe sent a towering fly ball over the right centerfield fence to put Bel-West on top.

“Sam struggled the first two at-bats but he didn’t give up,” Bel-West manager Jeff Neely said. “He didn’t quit. He knew ‘hey, I’m going to get another at-bat’ and sure enough they hung a curveball and he just got into it, which was great.”

But Bellevue East refused to go quietly in their half of the sixth, using a pair of singles and a groundout to pull within a single run with only one out. But Rossman shut the door from there, striking out the next batter before extending to collect the pop-up on the third base side of the mound to secure the win.

Bel-West jumped to the lead out of the gate against Bellevue East starting pitcher Bryce Beck, scoring first on back-to-back doubles from the leadoff hitter Rossman and then Colin Suter before Enger belted a three-run home run to push the score to 4-0 in the top half of the first inning.

But Beck settled in from there, retiring eight of the next nine batters he faced to keep his team in contention. When Beck left the game with one out in the sixth, he had mowed down nine Bel-West batters in a row, striking out four during that span. He finished the game with eight strikeouts, one walk and allowed only three base hits.

“He’s a real conident pitcher and I just told him to stay in it and the game was going to come to him,” Bellevue East manager Steve Emanuels said. “He had that tough first inning but he stuck with it.” Neely was also impressed with Beck’s performance.

“You’ve got to give their starting pitcher a tip of the cap, Bryce Beck was awesome,” Neely said. “After he got past the home run, he just dominated. He is a great young pitcher and is only going to get better.”

While Beck took control on the mound, his teammates continued to chip away at the plate, scoring one in the first, one in the fourth and two in the fifth to knot things up at four before Geffe’s game-winning home run in the sixth.

With the win, Bel-West remains in the winners bracket to face Kirkland National, which took care of Kirkland American 9-1 in the other winners bracket contest on Wednesday. Neely knows that his team will need to a complete effort on Saturday in the winners bracket semi-finals if they hope to move past a Kirkland National team that has scored 31 runs in three blowout wins in the tournament.

“We’re going to play a Kirkland team that has been lighting up the scoreboard,” Neely said, adding that he and his staff will attempt to channel their team’s confidence and energy heading into Saturday’s 6 p.m. matchup. The winner of that game will move to the championship round and will await the survivor of the losers bracket on Monday, July 18.

The road will be tougher for Bellevue East, which now must win three straight games to earn a spot in the finals and five straight to win the tournament. But that is nothing new for a team that compiled a 5-2 record in the 11-year-old District 9 Tournament last year. After falling to the losers bracket after it first game, this same team won five straight to reach the losers bracket finals before bowing out to Falls.

When asked about the path ahead, Emanuels cited that performance.

“We’re fine,” Emanuels said. “We’re ready to keep battling.”