By Brandon Sumrall/Special to the Advertiser

The Billingsley Bears baseball team brought an eight-game winning streak into a March 21 matchup with the Thorsby Rebels, but with a 5-1 win by the Rebels, that came to an end.

The Rebels, however, extended their own win streak to five straight.

A Rebels (8-3 overall, 3-0 region) error and a single by Joseph Nixon gave the Bears two on with one out, but a fly ball to center—îas well as one to left—left Billingsley with two stranded runners.

Meanwhile, four walks issued to the Rebels in the bottom half of the first inning resulted in a run scored by Conner McRae on a bases loaded walk to Jesse Spear.

With Billingsley (10-2, 6-1) going down in order in the top of the second, the Rebels tacked on one more run in the bottom half of the inning.

With the bases loaded and two outs, a pitch to Bailey Sellers hit the Rebel batter and pushed Grayson Bice across the plate to give Thorsby a 2-0 lead after two innings of play.

A Dalton Davis leadoff single along with two stolen bases by DaVIS set up an RBI single by Tyler Powell to put the Bears on the board in the top of the third.

The Rebels answered with two more runs in the bottom half of the inning on a RBI single by Zachary Morris and a run-scoring walk by Christopher Brown.

After three innings, the Rebels led 4-1.

Through the next four innings, the Rebels only faced one more than the minimum number of Bears batters, with the single Billingsley runner coming on a fourth inning walk to Kendall Elrod

The Rebels didn’t fair much better on the offensive side of the ball but picked up one more run in the matchup on a Tyler Owens home run in the bottom of the sixth (his fifth of the season, including three grand slams)

The pitching combination of Brown, Tyler Owens and Dylan Carroll combined for one earned run, two walks, two hits and four strikeouts.

Spear led the Rebels at the plate with a 2-for-2 performance with two singles and two walks.

Thomas Nichols and James Barnett combined to pitch for the Bears and issued nine walks, allowed six hits, five earned runs and picked up three strikeouts.

Davis and Nixon both went 1-for-3 with a single for the Bears.