LONGWOOD, Fla. – The Leesburg Thunder won an 11-inning thriller over the DeLand Angels while Sanford was able to hold off the Winter Garden Suns on a stormy Central Florida afternoon.

For the Suns, it was their second consecutive one run loss to the Monarchs. Jonnie Benniefield kept his hot start to the season going, hitting a grand slam in the 3rd inning off of Sanford starter Julio Medina. Ryan Brewer provided Winter Garden with five solid innings and was in line for the win.

The Monarchs were able to mount a rally, however, off of Suns reliever Evan Wedlock in the home half of the 7th. Adrian Delgado got the inning going with a two-run home run to plate Darius Baldwin who had led off the inning with a double. Five batters later, Britt Crawford laced a ball in to the gap that was able to score Harrison Keslar for what would be the game-winning run.

Michael McArdle came in for Sanford in the 8th inning and was able to pick up his second consecutive save, throwing a scoreless 1.2 innings.

Leesburg hosted DeLand in what was another rematch from this past Saturday.

The game quickly turned in to a pitching duel as both starters did not allow an earned run, and only let up a combined seven hits. It wasn’t until the sixth inning that a run was scored, as DeLand got on the board thanks to a throwing error on an aggressive double steal attempt.

However, it was once again the DeLand defense that came back to haunt the Angels as they gave up three unearned runs in the 7th inning to surrender the lead.

DeLand fought back though, putting together a two-out rally with the game on the line to tie it up at three apiece and send the game in to extras. It would all be for naught though, with Xavier Rodriguez hitting a walk-off double in the bottom of the 11th, keeping the Leesburg Thunder’s record a perfect 5-0.