Fort Walton Beach thumps Choctaw (PHOTO GALLERY)

FORT WALTON BEACH — It isn’t very often that the coach on the winning side of a 17-6 win over a county rival comes across as apologetic for his team’s performance. But that was just the case following Fort Walton Beach’s thumping of Choctawhatchee at Campbell Field on Thursday night.

As it came to bat in the top of the seventh inning, Fort Walton Beach (3-2) had amassed 11 runs on just three hits before batting around in the final frame, where J.D. Little’s two-run single and Blake Becnel’s two-run triple amounted to a watershed inning for the Vikings.

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“It was a strange game,” Vikings coach David Garner said. “We had the lead but you had the feeling, because we weren’t actually hitting the baseball well, that (Choctaw) almost had the upper hand. It wasn’t pretty, but anytime you get a win it’s got to be a good deal for us.”

Aside from Becnel and Little, only Dale Smith and Brandon Horn registered a hit, with Horn going 3-for-5 with a pair of singles, one double and two RBIs.

Choctaw (2-5) pitchers — and on this night there were six — issued 15 walks and struck two batters.

“Coming into the season, we had one guy that had thrown an inning on varsity,” Indians’ coach Scott Johnson said. “We just got to get better.”

Fort Walton Beach jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the second, an inning that was highlighted by a two-run single by Horn and began with Becnel being struck in the head by a pitch. Then, in the bottom half of the inning, Choctaw appeared to have designs on trimming that lead when Miguel Paulino legged out an infield single, pinch-hitter Cameron McNabb reached on a walk and Ben Hambleton reached on an infield single.

Unfortunately for Choctaw, McNabb continued to run for third base, where Paulino had settled, forcing the Indians’ lead runner to make a dash for home where he was tagged out by Viking catcher Austin Sullivan to end the threat and the inning.

Choctaw would make one last stand in the third when Luke Clark launched a towering two-run home run over the left field fence to draw the Indians within three at 6-3, but from there Fort Walton Beach would continue to add to its lead, even if it meant doing so largely without having to make much contact, as evidenced by Mac Barton’s pair of RBIs on bases loaded walks, before the Vikings bats came alive in the seventh.

“We needed to make those runs look like we earned them,” Becnel said.