Futures weekend play kicked off on Thursday with matchups between Winter Garden & DeLand, and Leesburg & Winter Park.

Winter Garden got out to an early lead in the second inning behind a single from TJ Burkes, directly followed by a 2-RBI big fly from Matt Morgan. More insurance came for Winter Garden in the 9th inning behind a 2 –RBI double from Matthew Miller, followed by an RBI single from Giovanni Garcia.  Jesse Coates got the win after 5 innings of work before handing over duties to Colin Booten who grabbed the 4-inning save.  Winter Garden: 5, DeLand: 1.

Casey Wright was going strong on the mound for Winter Park until the wheels came off in the 7th inning. Winter Park lost a 3-0 lead when Leesburg put up 5 runs in the 7th.  Taylor Clark and Spencer Taylor both recorded RBI singles early in the 7th. Brenton Burgess did some more damage with a 2-RBI single of his own. Leesburg took the game 7-4. Xavier Rodriguez picked up the win in relief for the Thunder, allowing just one earned run in four innings of work.

After their loss on Thursday, Winter Park picked up a much-needed 9-2 win over DeLand on Saturday. The Freedom scored 4 runs in the 4th, coming from 2 SAC flies and a 2-RBI home run from shortstop, Justin Moran. Julian Nunez knocked in a run in the 5th inning with an RBI single. Nunez and Cosgrove later scored in the inning after a couple errors from the DeLand defense. Quinton Martinez was credited with the win after tossing 5 shutout innings, striking out 6 batters along the way.