MINDEN, La. — After winning both of its games last Saturday to advance to the MPSA Class A South State Playoffs as the South Wild Card No. 1 team, WCCA head coach Ray Olive said his team got in through the back door.

On the other hand, Glenbrook earned its berth in the playoffs by winning the District 6-A Tournament championship. And with the Apaches having home-field advantage in the first-round, not many people would have given the Rams a chance.

But that all changed on Tuesday afternoon as WCCA, which played its share of eventual playoffs teams during the regular season, gained the upper hand on the series with a 7-5 win over Glenbrook to take a one game to none lead in the best-of-three series.

Game two of the series will be played at WCCA on Thursday at 6:30 p.m.

“The story of the day was not quitting, playing through adversity on the road,” Olive said. “The kids had a lot of confidence and a lot of heart. Clutch hitting and clutch at-bats by the bottom of the order.”

The Rams went into the top of the seventh inning trailing 5-3. Glenbrook stayed with starting pitcher Singleton, which proved to be costly. The first batter he faced, Joseph Harvey, was hit by a pitch. Then Samuel came in to relieve Singleton and he got off to a tough start by walking Hayden Holden to put runners at first and second base.

Hayden Whetstone moved Harvey and Holden into scoring position by laying down a sacrifice bunt. Samuel appeared like he was going to get out of the jam by striking out the next batter for the second out, but he walked Lane McCarty to load the bases and Cory Havard to bring in Harvey to make it a 5-4 game.

Then Brandon Simon came up with the big hit of the game as he cleared the bases with a triple to give the Rams a 7-5 lead. Sutton Olive got the save for WCCA (20-9) by going three-up, three-down. Simon was also the winning pitcher. He went six innings, allowing five runs on seven hits.

Coach Olive said he was proud of the players on his team for not getting down on themselves after Glenbrook took a 3-1 lead going into the third inning.

“When they came back with two in the second and we came back with two in the third, we knew we could play,” Olive said. “We were very patient at the plate. They walked three and hit a batter.”

WCCA started off the game by scoring one run in the top of the first inning. McCarty, who went 3-for-3 with three runs scored, led off with a single, moved to second on a ground ball by Havard and third on a passed ball before scoring on a sacrifice fly by Simon, who went 3-for-3 with two double in addition to his game-winning triple and six runs batted in.

After the third inning, neither team scored until Glenbrook (15-6) scored one run in the bottom of the sixth to take the 5-3 lead. Coach Olive said that despite the fact that Sutton Olive had thrown a lot of pitches last week, putting him to close the game in the seventh was “a no-brainer.”

Left fielder George Davis made two big catches on fly balls and Sutton got the next batter to hit a ground ball to second for the final out of the game.

Cavalier led Glenbrook at the plate by going 2-for-4 with a double and Pearce was 2-for-3.