VALDOSTA — The power of the rally cap has helped many teams throughout the years come back from the biggest of deficits.

However, Tuesday it was the power of Lowndes’ bats that allowed the Vikings to come from behind to defeat Coffee 6-4.

Behind by one run in heading into the bottom of the fifth inning, the Vikings started showed their power in the middle of their lineup.

JonMichael Redding was the first player to the plate and reached second after being plunked by Trojans pitcher Jamal Smith.

Redding was driven home on a double by No. 3 hitter Matt Harper to tie the game at three.

With several players watching from the dugout with their hats turned inside out, John Simpson came up to bat and hit a two-run homer over the right-center field wall, giving the Vikings the lead.

“I had to put it in play,” Simpson said.

Simpson put the ball out of play for the first of back-to-back home runs.

One batter later Chris Powell followed suit with a shot over left field.

With the regular season winding down, the Vikings knew they had to win every game and took matters into their own hands in the fifth.

“We just knew we had to get out there and just hit the ball,” Simpson said. “We can’t lose another one.

“We have to count on other people to lose and we didn’t want to have to do that, so we had to step up and do something.”

The fifth inning provided the Vikings an offensive spark they couldn’t find all game.

“It was big,” Lowndes coach Danny Redshaw said. “We needed to do something. We weren’t swinging it real well.

Lowndes tried to get something going in the first, putting three men on base, but couldn’t convert.

Redding walked as the second batter of the inning with Harper getting a single and Simpson walking to load the bases. Powell and Randy J. Williams made the last two outs of the inning leaving the bases juiced.

The Trojans were able to convert their runners by moving players along with sacrifices and wild pitches.

“In the bottom of the first, we leave the bases loaded and don’t get anything, and they get one hit and one run,” Redshaw said. “That’s baseball.”

The Vikings got their first run after Chris Mederos hit a double and came home on a wild pitch.

Lowndes added another in the bottom of the fourth when Mederos again benefited by a wild pitch, this time reaching base on one after a strikeout.

Coffee attempted a comeback in the top of the sixth thanks to a swing of the bat by smith.

The first batter up in the sixth, Smith hit a monster shot over the left field fence bringing the score to within two.

Coffee wouldn’t come any closer as Mederos pitched the last two innings while striking out five.

The big fifth inning and the victory placed Lowndes at 5-2 in the region one game behind Valdosta.

“We still have a chance — that’s all you ask for is No. 1, you want to get into the playoffs and then you want to get the No. 1 seed,” Redshaw said.

The Vikings will have a chance to do that Friday when they travel to Valdosta.

Thanks to a Lowndes win in the archrivals matchup April 7 a Vikings’ win Friday would earn them the Class AAAAA, Region 1 title and the No. 1 seed.

“We’re playing pretty good,” Simpson said. “We have Valdosta, a tough team, on Friday and in order to win region we have to beat them.

“We just have to get the job done like we did (Tuesday).”