File photo – The McKinleyville Panthers won a non-league game against South Fork on Wednesday.

Kolbey Stolpe is beginning to find his groove at the plate.

The McKinleyville junior hit home runs in both of his at-bats on Wednesday to lead the Panthers to a 10-0 win in five innings in a non-league showdown against South Fork at Mack High.

Stolpe finished 2-for-2 and drove in four runs, as the Panthers won for the fifth time in their last six games and improved to 9-4 on the season.

The junior standout was one of eight different McKinleyville players to hit successfully in the win, which should give the Panthers some momentum heading into a key Big 5 clash against Fortuna on Thursday.

Tyson Bragg also had a good day at the plate and finished 1-for-2 with a double, while a pair of freshmen, Rhythm Green and Hunter Carper, continued to impress as they adapt quickly to the high school level.

Green was 1-for-1 with an RBI, while Carper was 1-for-3 with an RBI.

A third freshman, Joe Tanno, got the win on the mound.

Tanno threw all five innings and gave up just two hits while striking out three and getting plenty of help from a McKinleyville defense that has not been making a lot of mistakes lately.

“We just played defense behind Joe,” McKinleyville head coach Mike Dobrec said. “Joe threw strikes and we made the plays. We didn’t have an error.”

According to the coach, the McKinleyville bats took a couple of innings to get going, but once they did there was no way back for the visitors.

Tenoch Tapia, Evan Fraser, Jackson Kelly and Branson Dobrec each also had a base hit in the win.

There were’t a whole lot of positives for the Cubs, who saw a three-game winning streak end as they dropped to 7-7.

Wesley Way and Trevor Hunt each had a hit in the loss.

“My team just needs to minimize errors if we ever want to compete with bigger schools,” head coach Chris Contreras said. “Hopefully we can correct that problem for the second half of the season.”

The Panthers, who are 4-1 in the Big 5 and hold a half-game lead over Eureka (4-2), will play the Huskies at 4 p.m. on Thursday.

“Hopefully we can carry our hitting over into that game tomorrow,” Mike Dobrec said.