There’s joy in winning. And there is also relief.

The latter emotion was the one Bryan County felt Tuesday night when it squeaked out a 7-5 win over one-win Cavalry Day School in a Region 3AA game at Redskins Field. The Redskins had beaten the Cavaliers, 14-0, earlier in the season, but this one was a dogfight from the get-go.

It wasn’t decided until the bottom of the sixth when freshman shortstop Julia Koskela tripled to drive in Emma Into with what proved to be the winning run. The score was tied when Koskela lashed a hard shot down the left-field line to plate Into, who had led off the inning with a single, her second of the game.

Koskela then scored an unneeded insurance run when the Calvary first baseman dropped the ball on what would have been the third out of the inning.

The win was the fourth in a row for the Redskins (9-6) following a three-game losing streak and kept them alive in the race for a state playoff berth going into the final two weeks of the regular season.

Per the Post Season Rankings posted by the GHSA through games of Monday, the Redskins were ranked 35th among all Class AA schools, but with nine private schools ahead of them, they are 26th when it comes to snaring one of the 32 public school tournament playoff spots.

Bryan County’s remaining games are a challenge. It played at Statesboro on Wednesday, the first of two games with the Blue Devils, two games with Southeast Bulloch, a game with Tattnall County, and remaining region games with Metter and Savannah Christian.

After Wednesday’s game with Statesboro, the Redskins will be at Savannah Christian on Thursday and will host Tattnall on Monday and Metter on Tuesday.

Coach Jessica Schroeder-Cooper’s team cruised to a 17-1 win over Jenkins on Monday thanks to an 11-run third inning. The game was halted due to the mercy rule with two outs in the third thanks to a two-run home run by Emily Johnson.

In addition to her homer, the hot-hitting Johnson also had a leadoff triple, a single in the second and a walk in the third as she scored four runs and drove in three. Chloe Good also had a pair of doubles and two RBI against the overmatched Warriors who dropped to 4-19.

The struggling Cavs, however, were a different story as they stung the Redskins and starting pitcher Lila Hannah for three runs in the third inning. Bryan County countered with two in its half of the inning thanks to a triple by Peyton Scott, which scored Johnson and Koskela, who had doubled and reached on an error, respectively.

The Redskins got a pair in the fourth for a 4-3 lead as Johnson doubled in a run and the second run scored on Addy Blair’s ground ball out.

Calvary took a 5-4 lead with two runs in the fifth, but the Redskins scratched out a run in the bottom of the inning to knot the score, setting up the sixth-inning heroics by Koskela.