At the start of their final at bat in the bottom of the seventh inning of Friday’s 3A Washington State Baseball Championship semifinal playoff game against Mercer Island, the Spartans needed five runs — nearly as many as they had managed throughout the entire contest — to even things up and perhaps regain their chance at a trip to the championship game.

It was a tall order, no doubt about it.

But, as the members of the Bainbridge High varsity baseball team reassured each other in the dugout as the first batter approached the plate, “It’s been done. It’s been done.”

No doubt it has, but it didn’t come together that way Friday.

Mercer Island ran off with an 11-6 win, and would go on to defeat Shorewood High the very next day and claim the number one spot in the state.

The Spartans returned to Husky Ballpark Saturday to face off against Central Kitsap, where they were bested again and forced to settle for fourth place.

Friday’s loss was seemingly assured early, but then the BHS squad rallied and put up some runs mid-game before falling irrevocably behind in the last two innings.

The Spartans were outplayed, BHS Head Coach Simon Pollack said, both at the plate and on the mound, which, coupled with several defensive errors, simply put them too far behind to recover.

“We got beat,” he said afterward. “Trent [Schulte] didn’t have his best stuff. Jason [Snare] was hit-and-miss too, and they hit the ball.

“They were hitting the ball all game,” he added. “It just so happened that in the beginning they were hitting it to us.”

Mercer Island totaled 16 hits throughout the game against the Spartans’ five.

Bainbridge led the game 1-0 initially, however, after keeping the Islanders off the board during their first at bat.

Neither team put up anything in the second inning, before Mercer ran ahead with three in the top of the third.

Bainbridge answered in the bottom with one to trail 3-2.

After staying scoreless in the top of the fourth, it was Mercer’s turn to trail as BHS racked up three runs to claim the lead 5-3.

BHS pulled further ahead in the fifth, adding one more run and advancing their advantage to 6-3.

It was in the top of the sixth that Mercer reclaimed control of the game and knocked out four runs in the top of the inning to reclaim the lead 7-6.

Bainbridge was unable to muster a response in the bottom of the inning, and when Mercer managed another four-run inning in the top of the seventh, things began to look dire for the Spartans.

A scoreless final at bat cemented the frustrating finale to a spectacular season, which concluded with an overall season record of 21-5.

Regardless of who their final opponent turned out to be, Pollack said Friday, the Spartans had personal reasons to dig deep during the third/fourth place matchup Saturday.

“If it’s CK then we’re going to want to do something for pride, for sure, for the peninsula,” he said. “And if it’s Shorewood, they knocked us out [of the tournament] last year.”

Ultimately, the Spartans were pitted against Central Kitap and fell 6-4.

All the action in Saturday’s game came late. Bainbridge was in the lead 4-1, but then CK put up five in the top of the seventh to steal the win.

The fourth-place state trophy is the first in several years for the Spartans, who last brought home a second-place prize in 2009.

“I’m incredibly proud of the guys,” Pollack said. “They worked really hard to get here. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more to help them out during the game, but it is what it is.”