GRUNDY CENTER — West Marshall baseball coach Jerod Brown elected not to warn his team that evan a 7-0 lead with its best pitcher on the mound wasn’t safe.

Now he’ll never have to.

The Trojans withstood South Hardin’s spirited comeback and added some essential insurance in a 10-6 victory over the Tigers in Tuesday’s Class 2A District 13 semifinal at the George Wilhelm Sports Complex.

Beckham DeSotel helped his own cause with a bases-clearing double in West Marshall’s six-run fourth inning, and the junior right-hander returned to the pitcher’s mound with a 7-0 lead. South Hardin (20-7) started its comeback innocently enough with a run in the fifth before erupting for five more in the sixth, chasing DeSotel from the bump.

The Trojans (19-12) made a pivotal play on defense to help senior left-hander Hunter Polley pitch his way out of the jam, and a clutch hit by another West Marshall youngster helped secure the victory. Freshman Turner DeRossett’s bases-clearing, two-out triple in the bottom of the sixth staked the Trojans to a 10-6 lead that took the steam out of South Hardin’s rally heading into its last at-bat.

“They’ve got all the momentum after scoring five and they have 2-3-4, which is a very strong part of their lineup, coming up,” Brown said of South Hardin’s late hopes. “I’m not saying [DeRossett’s hit] was the difference-maker in the game. We still had the lead, but it really made it a hell of a lot better, let’s put it that way.”

Polley and the Trojan defense worked around a one-out walk to retire the heart of South Hardin’s batting order and preserve the newly-minted four-run lead. A one-swing scenario would have looked a lot different with Tigers slugger Preston Dolash and his five home runs at the plate in the top of the seventh, but Polley got him to ground out to end the game instead.

“I think they’ve got a group of athletes that have won a lot of things, a lot of guys that are probably on that football team that made the (UNI-)Dome,” Brown said. “They’re very athletic. I think coach (Nathan) Weig has done an excellent job with that program over the last three years and I think it says a lot about their character the fact that they kept competing all the way.”

Polley picked up the save for his 1 2/3 innings of relief work that looked a lot differently after the Tigers made their comeback against DeSotel. Brown didn’t want to plant the seed of doubt in his players’ minds until South Hardin made the move itself.

“I don’t think you say a word,” he said. “You start putting that in their head, you’re kind of setting it up. I think you just go out there and try to compete the next pitch and see what happens.”

West Marshall got the game’s first run on a DeSotel grounder in the bottom of the third. DeRossett walked and stole second before Evan Siegert reached safely on a sacrifice bunt-turned-single. He took second before DeSotel’s one-out grounder drove in DeRossett with the icebreaker.

In the fourth, Karver Christensen led off with a single, and Blayk Hart’s sacrifice bunt was misplayed by reliever Braden Weig. Freshman Beau Benson worked a walk and DeRossett did the same, plating pinch-runner Zavier Juel before Weig plunked Seigert to force in another run.

Reliever Garrett Anderson got Polley to pop up to shallow center field, but DeSotel delivered a double to the left-center gap for a 6-0 lead.

Courtesy runner Garrett Bear then scored from second base on a single to left by Riley Hanford, lifting West Marshall to a seven-run edge.

DeSotel returned the mound before eventually getting chased off it in the top of the sixth by South Hardin’s surge. Polley inherited one out and two baserunners, forcing one of them out on a fielder’s choice grounder, but Clayton Cable’s bloop single plated a run to make it 7-5. Cable and Colby Zollar both moved into scoring position when Cable’s hit skipped past Benson in right.

Tigers leadoff batter Joshua Spindler followed with a run-scoring grounder up the middle that eighth-grade second baseman Levi Juel got to, but not in time to get the speedy Spindler at first. With Cable sprinting around third, Juel fired a strike to Hanford at the plate, and the freshman catcher tagged out Cable to end South Hardin’s rally.

“Levi Juel knocked the ball down that took a bad hop and the runner at first was going to be safe, and he stayed composed,” Brown said. “It would have been easy to rush that throw home. He made a strong throw, we executed it, and it could have been the difference-maker in the game in a lot of ways.”

Hanford and Christensen both finished with two of West Marshall’s seven hits, while DeSotel and DeRossett both drove in four runs. DeRossett walked or was hit by a pitch three times and scored twice out of the No. 9 position in the Trojan batting order.

“Turner’s kind of gone through it this year, and he would be the first one to tell you,” Brown said. “As a freshman playing at the varsity level, it has been a growing process for him and he’s been very coachable. He’s been very willing to be selfless throughout the season, do anything, and the maturity of his at-bat to get a 3-2 walk earlier in the game to start that one was huge. And then he came through (with a triple).

“Those are things that a month ago, two months ago, would not have happened, but he’s really grown a lot and a lot of credit to him and his character.”

DeSotel struck out six over 5 1/3 innings for the win, walking two while allowing six hits and five earned runs.

South Hardin starter Peyton Welch got the loss despite allowing just one run in 2 1/3 innings. Welch, Weig and Anderson combined to walk five and hit five batters.

West Marshall will return to Grundy Center on Saturday at 7 p.m. to face the 17-4 host Spartans, who dispatched Aplington-Parkersburg 6-1 in Tuesday’s second game.