MOULTRIE – Heading into the Deep South Baseball Conference tournament that opened Monday, the Colquitt County eighth-grade team was 9-5 with two of its losses to Tift County and two others to Hahira.

The Packers got one monkey off their back with a 6-3 victory at Tift County in Wednesday’s semifinal matchup that sends them to the conference championship game scheduled for 4 p.m. Friday.

Their Friday opponent? Hahira, which has handled Colquitt with a 9-2 season-opening victory at Packer Park and a 10-1 win on March 11 at home.

Friday’s game also will be a rematch of last year’s conference’s championship game, won by Hahira 5-4 at Packer Park.

Hahira scored two runs in the sixth inning and two more in the seventh to win the 2023 tournament.

The Packers will have some momentum when they try to stop their slide against Hahira in the championship game, which is being threatened by a forecast of bad weather.

Colquitt County coach Ian Brinson said if Friday’s game is rained out, it will be played next Tuesday.

The eighth-grade Packers opened the season with three straight losses, but had won nine of 11 games heading into the tournament.

The slow start left the Packers as the No. 4 seed in the tournament.

Colquitt won its tournament opener on Monday, defeating No. 5-seeded Thomas County 10-2 at Packer Park.

That win sent the Packers to Tifton to play the top-seeded Blue Devils on Wednesday.

Tift defeated the Packers 10-1 and 13-8 in the two regular-season meetings.

But Colquitt pitchers Carson Taylor and Easton Harlow held the Blue Devils to just three runs and five hits.

Taylor went the first two innings and gave up the first Tift County run while allowing two hits and issuing two bases on balls.

Harlow, who got the win in relief, went the final five innings and gave up the other two runs, although only one was earned. He also walked two batters.

Tift led only once, scoring a single run in the bottom of the first. The game was tied 2-2 when the Packers scored a run in the sixth to take the lead they built on in the final inning.

The Packers scored three runs in the top of the seventh to pull away from their hosts.

Offensively, Colquitt got contributions throughout the lineup, with eight Packers getting the team’s nine hits.

Brey Sands had two singles, Kade Hopper had a double and Harlow, Bradley Bryan, Jackson Dorminey, Chase Enfinger, Briar Littleton and Trenton Coney added singles.