It all fell apart quickly....One moment, the R.A. Long and Rainier baseball teams were in a scoreless tie going to the seventh inning. After three RAL errors in rapid succession, the Columbians escaped with a 2-0 win despite mustering only one hit all game.

“We got a couple lucky breaks there in the seventh. That’s baseball,” Rainier coach Jacob Green said. “You wait for those breaks to come.”

Twenty minutes later on a drop-dead gorgeous afternoon at the Lumberyard, the two teams played again. And this time for RAL, it all came together.

Two weeks of pent-up frustration was exorcised by four hits and four runs in the bottom of the first. With Brett Coons throwing fireballs on the mound — the burly sophomore tossed five no-hit innings in his first varsity start — the Jacks cruised from there to a 6-2 victory.

“The first game, our bats didn’t come alive,” said Spencer Thorsen, who went 2 for 3 in Game 2 and scored a pair of runs. “But the second game, we caught fire.”

Both the Jacks (1-4) and the Columbians (1-4) picked up their first wins of the season Thursday afternoon.

The split left both coaches with mixed feelings, but the overwhelming one was happiness about finally getting over the hump.

“We’ve been waiting, waiting,” RAL coach Mark Hulings said. “I know they’re frustrated. We’ve had really close ballgames . … We’re just looking for a breakthrough.”

It took a couple hours longer than Hulings would have liked for his Jacks to get on the board, however, thanks to the pitching of Rainier’s Tim Seybert and Mason Schimmel.

Seybert started the first game of the day and allowed one hit over four innings. Schimmel kept it up in the final three frames, retiring RAL in order in the bottom of the seventh after the Columbians finally seized the lead.

“All year, they’ve been solid,” Green said of the pair. “They went out and did exactly what I expected them to do.”

Seybert and Schimmel’s effort was nearly wasted, however. Rainier’s offense was impotent, recording 15 of its first 18 outs via strikeout and failing to push a runner past second base until the seventh inning.

Much of that, of course, had to do with RAL’s own stellar arms. The Game 1 starter was freshman Andrew Walling, who allowed just one hit and struck out 12 in five innings.

“His presence on the bump is impressive right now,” Hulings said. “We feel really comfortable with him.”

With Thorsen on the mound in the seventh, however, RAL’s usually tight defense turned porous.

A line drive hit the center fielder’s glove and fell to the grass. A bobbled ball while trying to turn a double play resulted in no outs at all.

And, finally, Casey Tripp’s ground ball up the middle skittered past shortstop Gunnar Blix and into the outfield, allowing the decisive two runs to score.

“We have to be able to find ways to win,” Green said. “We put the ball in play, and when you do that it puts pressure on them to make plays.”

The second game began with a bang.

After Coons set the Columbians down in order in the top of the first, the Jacks strung together a walk and four singles to create four runs in their half of the inning.

The Jacks scored two more in the second inning on an RBI single by Thorsen and a booming double to left-center from Blix.

Coons, meanwhile, kept on dealing, facing only one batter above the minimum through five frames and striking out five on 73 pitches.

“He wanted another inning,” Hulings said. “But we just went with our pitch count.”

Freshmen Mikael Elliott and Alex Brady came on to finish the job in each of their respective first varsity appearances on the mound.

Elliott got into a bit of trouble in the sixth, loading the bases before allowing a two-run single by Jeff Tripp, but he settled down before much damage was done.

In all, RAL’s four underclassmen pitchers allowed two hits, no runs and struck out 19 in 12 innings of work Thursday.

Keep that up, and the Jacks won’t have to wait two weeks before they win again.

“We are a young team, we know that,” Hulings said. “So we’ll just keep getting them opportunities. We liked what we saw out of those guys.”