The Welland Jackfish rebounded from one of their toughest losses of the season to keep their hopes of a second consecutive Dominco Cup alive.

The Jackfish staved off elimination with a 9-7 win at Guelph Monday night to even the Intercounty Baseball League best-of-five semifinal playoffs series 2-2.

Game 5 goes Thursday in Welland.

The win came 24 hours after a lopsided 12-3 loss at home in Game 3 that saw the Royals jump out to a 4-0 lead in the second inning.

“We got beat up Sunday night but we responded for sure,” Jackfish manager Brian Essery said.

Essery said the message following the loss was to turn the page and focus on Game 4.

“You just have to flush it,” he said. “That’s what we discussed immediately after the game. Let’s forget about this one. We have to go at it again tomorrow with our backs against the wall.”

Essery had no doubt the Jackfish would respond.

“We know how to do it. We’ve done it in the playoffs already. We had to respond after Game 1 versus Kitchener and after Game 1 against Guelph and we did both of those times. We have a good core group that returned from last year that went down in the final 2-0 and we responded as well.

Click here to read the full article on BP Sports Niagara.