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The Franklin County Rebels beat the East Limestone Indians 13-3 at home Monday in their first game of the season.

The Rebels rallied from an early deficit to tie the score in the second inning and pulled away with a 10-run fourth inning as they picked up a blowout victory from there.

Franklin County head baseball coach Mike Crossland said that the first inning of the game wasn’t an ideal start to the season, but his team did what it needed to do to win.

“It’s not the way we want to start the year in that first inning as far as pitching, coming out with three walks and two hit batsmen, but our guys competed,” he said. “We’re not going to have the ability to walk people, hit people, like most ball clubs, and wait for offense when we face good pitching like we’re going to face down the road.”

The Indians scored three runs in the first inning without putting a ball in play as a walk and two hit batters loaded the bases before a bases-loaded walk, a wild pitch and a steal of home during a rundown produced one run each.

The Rebels struck back in the bottom of the second as Wyatt Lowe hit an RBI single, and Austin Roberts followed with a two-run single later in the frame to tie the score at 3-3.

After a scoreless third inning, the Rebels got their offense rolling again in the bottom of the fourth with the first run of the frame coming when Jacob Hardison scored off of an error on a ball hit by Sam Vincent.

Gavin Sells hit a two-run single later in the same inning, and Lowe drew a bases-loaded walk to grow the Franklin County lead to 7-3.

The Indians began to completely unravel defensively from there as they committed errors on five consecutive balls put into play, leading to five additional runs for the Rebels with Lowe also scoring on a wild pitch in the middle of the sequence to give the Rebels 10 total runs for the inning and a 13-3 advantage overall.

Pitcher Casen Gilliam held the Indians off the board in the top of the fifth to officially end the game early via the mercy rule as the Rebels won by 10.

Sells started the game for the Rebels and recorded one out with one strikeout, no hits and three runs allowed.

Gilliam proceeded to pitch the remaining 4 2-3 innings in relief with five strikeouts, one hit and no runs allowed.

With the win, the Rebels started the season with a record of 1-0.

They will next play Wednesday at home against Community High School. First pitch is scheduled for 5 p.m.