After every game they play at Halliwell Park, the Pocatello Rebels clean up the field. They water the infield and outfield, make sure the bases are secure and generally make things look tidy. There’s always another team playing, another practice coming up, another organization using the field soon. Rarely do they miss a spot.

The one they missed — or somebody did — may have saved the Rebels’ season.

In the bottom of the eighth inning of the Rebels’ single-A state tournament opener on Wednesday afternoon, against Ridgevue, the hosts found themselves in trouble: Tie game, two outs, a runner on first.

The runner, Dominic Schmittel, moved up on a passed ball. Then, when the next Warhawk batter hit a grounder up the middle, Rebels second baseman Evan Geisbrect had trouble fielding the ball. He realized he didn’t have time to make the play at first, but Schmittel was rounding third, bolting for home. So he decided to throw home. Except the throw came much too late.

But halfway down the baseline, Schmittel slipped and fell. That gave the Rebels time to get him in a rundown and pick him off. Ridgevue failed to score.

“So maybe the baseball gods were looking at us,” Rebels coach Chris Seckel said.

In their 7-5, 10-inning win over Ridgevue, good for a spot in Thursday’s second round, the Rebels had more to thank than the baseball gods. In the top of the 10th, third baseman Gavin Flynn recorded a go-ahead RBI groundout. Geisbrect followed with a sacrifice bunt that scored another run. That was all the cushion the Rebels needed to secure a win and move on in the state tournament — their first in program history.

With the win, the Rebels will play again at 7 p.m. Thursday, facing either the Razorbacks or the Nampa Braves. That game is set for 7 p.m. Wednesday.

For Pocatello, it amounted to a marathon win. The Rebels overcame four errors, survived a four-inning scoring drought and got six innings of work from reliever Cody Mortenson, who held the Warhawks to three runs (two earned) and fanned a pair of batters. The game lasted some two and a half hours. The Rebels needed every minute.

“That was such a relief,” Flynn said. “That's probably the longest game I've ever played.”

If it felt that way, it’s because of how the middle innings dragged on. After six innings, the Rebels held a 5-4 lead, thanks to an RBI single from Mortenson, a sacrifice fly from Rafael Avalos and alert baserunning from Kache Stucki, Preston Foltz and Mortenson. That’s when the drought started. The Rebels failed to score from the sixth to the ninth inning. They had chances. They could not cash in.

That ended in the 10th frame, when Flynn grounded out and the Rebels took the lead — for good.

“Some of the stuff they've done in the last week and a half, two weeks, it's just been amazing,” Seckel said. “So I just kinda gotta have the faith in them and let them do what they do.”

Seckel was referencing the Rebels’ run in the postseason. Here’s how that has unfolded: The team dropped its first game of the single-A district tournament, putting them in danger of exiting early. But they followed with five straight wins, securing the district crown and moving on to this state tournament.

It prompts a question: How has that happened? What has fueled the team’s run to get here?

“The thing is, they're hitting,” Seckel said. “They’ve really started hitting the ball in the last five, six games, and putting the ball in play. Errors have gone down a little bit. So they're just growing up, is what it is. They're just deciding they want to play baseball and they don't want it to quit. They don't want it to end. They're doing the things they need to do to get to where they need to be.”