With one mighty swing of the bat in the bottom of the ninth inning, Mountain View’s Easton Herberger gave the Cougars an emphatic 8-7 win over Redmond Tuesday in the opening series of Intermountain Conference play.

With the score deadlocked 7-7 in extra innings, the senior left fielder needed just one pitch to end the game with a towering home run that cleared the left-field fence at Mountain View.

“I was just trying to get on base to keep the game going with the top of the lineup coming up,” Herberger said. “But the pitch could not have been more perfect-perfect. After I made contact, I had a feeling it would go out. It just came off the bat perfectly.”

The Cougars are off to a hot start with a record of 8-2, and they were set to play at Redmond on Wednesday evening before hosting the Panthers again in the third-and-final game of the series on Friday.

From the nine-hole spot in the lineup, Herberger sparked the Mountain View offense on Tuesday. He reached base on all four of his trips to the plate with two doubles and one home run, while driving in two runs.

Herberger had to miss the latter half of the season last spring (and the first half of the football season) after sustaining a shoulder injury that required reconstructive surgery after diving for a fly ball in the outfield.

“That was so awesome for Easton,” said Mountain View coach Ryan Johnson. “It was great to see him at the start of league play and swing with confidence.”

Herberger’s homer was not the only late-game heroics for Mountain View (8-2, 1-0 IMC) against Redmond (4-7, 0-1) Tuesday evening. The Cougars showed their toughness to regain momentum and scrap out a victory after letting an early lead slip away in the later innings.

“It wasn’t pretty,” Johnson said. “It is an interesting way to open league play. We have three games against them each year. We found a way to win, and that is all that matters.”

Despite trailing 4-0 after two innings and 5-3 lead through four innings, the Panthers mounted a comeback in the fifth and sixth innings to take a 7-6 lead. Juniors Tyler Ruettgers, Tarrant Lucero and Eli Pupo had RBIs for the Panthers during their comeback.

Redmond pitchers Gunnar Key and Pupo both came on in relief to slow down the Mountain View bats. In the first two innings, the Cougars tallied six hits, scored four runs and walked three times without striking out. But Key and Pupo struck out 10 Cougar batters and allowed four runs on six hits over the next six innings.

Redmond had the lead and the momentum on its side heading into the seventh inning.

Trailing by one and down to its final out, Mountain View junior outfielder Brady Kennedy roped a double to left field to bring home the tying run and force extra innings.

“I knew that we needed something big,” said Kennedy, who also picked up the win on the mound after throwing two shutout innings in relief. “I told Easton and Connor (Crum) before the inning started that I was going to get up, and I was going to end it. I didn’t end the game, but got the RBI and moved the game along. That was big for us, because that shifted the momentum.”

With eight wins in its first 10 games, including a 4-0 trip during spring break in California, Mountain View is off to a strong start to the season. Even when wins are not pretty, the Cougars will take them with the hope of building and improving off of them.

“We know what we can do,” Kennedy said. “When we get out to a lead like that it is easy to take your foot off the gas. But as league progresses we are going to have to work on that. Early in the season we are happy to come out with a win.”