MARSHALLTOWN - Every time Mid-Prairie comes up to bat, the "Jaws" theme should be playing in the background.

Mid-Prairie players celebrate Layne Swartzentruber’s (15) three-run homer against East Marshall in a semifinal game at the Class 2A state baseball tournament Friday in Marshalltown. Mid-Prairie won 12-6. The Des Moines Register/Bill Neibergall

Don't step onto the pitcher's mound. No lead is safe.

Mid-Prairie, down 4-0 early, rallied to a 12-6 state baseball semifinal win over East Marshall on Friday. The Golden Hawks (30-10) face South O'Brien (20-13) at 1 p.m. today in the 2A championship.

A win would earn the Golden Hawks the first boys state team title in school history.

"We've just got to keep doing what we've been doing," senior Layne Swartzentruber said, "and hopefully it'll turn out how we want."

Nothing went how Mid-Prairie wanted in the top of the first inning. East Marshall used four squib hits and two Golden Hawks errors to take a 4-0 lead.

"It got kind of quiet," senior Chris Driscol said. "We knew we could come back, though. Once you get down, you're beat.

"We knew we had to stay up."

East Marshall, playing just 10 miles down the road from its hometown of LeGrand, had a big, boisterous crowd on hand.

"They were unbelievable," Mustang senior Brian Mullenbach said. "(Going ahead 4-0) gave our crowd a reason to be loud, instead of them just making themselves be loud."

Title shot • What: The Class 2A state baseball championship. • When, where: 1 p.m. today in Marshalltown. • Matchup: Mid-Prairie (30-10) vs. South O’Brien (20-13).

And even when the Mustangs allowed four runs on one hit - a leadoff single by Driscol - in the second inning, the Mustang fans stayed loud.

Swartzentruber was able to push the mute button in the third inning, however, when he unleashed a three-run home run to cap a five-run inning.

"That helped us out. That just got us going," Swartzentruber said. "It gave us an extra charge. We knew we could do it. We had to step up, and we did."

Joel Fry also had an RBI single in the inning as Mid-Prairie took a 9-4 lead.

"(Swartzentruber's homer) was a big hit," Mid-Prairie coach Brian Miller said. "That was a swing there. The momentum kind of came out of their dugout and back over to ours.

"The biggest thing it did was it enabled our defense to relax a bit and make plays."

The East Marshall crowd remained rowdy, but it didn't bother Golden Hawk starter Sean Thornton, who held the Mustangs to just one hit from the second inning through the fifth inning.

But in the sixth, with nobody out, Thornton gave up a bases-loaded walk to Mustang leadoff hitter Jake Bennett. Miller brought in sophomore Brock Yoder out of the bullpen.

"There's always nerves," Miller said of the sophomore. "But Brock is a heck of a competitor. It was a baptism by fire, and he got his job done."

With the bases still jammed, Yoder induced a run-scoring groundout, then a pop-up, and finally struck out cleanup hitter Gary Vanderah.

"That was big," Miller said. "They had all the momentum going over there and their crowd was pumped up."

Down just 9-6, the Mustangs still had visions of advancing until the bottom of the sixth inning.

Driscol, who finished 4-for-4 on the night, had an RBI single to add a little insurance. Then Brent Yotty added a bigger cushion with his two-run homer to make it 12-6.

"Once we get up big, that's when we get going," Driscol said. "Everybody feeds off everybody."

Mid-Prairie second baseman Alan Schweinfurth made an ESPN web-gem catch, running full speed and then laying himself out to make a catch in shallow right field for the first out of the seventh. The Mustangs never got any closer.

"We're seasoned," Miller said. "We knew with the bats that we have, we'd be fine. We just made sure we didn't panic."

The Golden Hawks have been on fire since the postseason began and have scored 57 runs in six games, including 26 in two games in Marshalltown.

Now Mid-Prairie faces a South O'Brien team that upset top seed Cascade 2-1 and beat Fort Dodge St. Edmond 3-2 Friday with back-to-back three-hit pitching gems.

And they did it with a pair of pitchers in Clark Egdorf and Skyler Roder, who started state play with ERAs of 4.83 and 4.05, respectively.

Mid-Prairie will likely counter with staff ace Brent Yotty (9-4, 1.78 ERA) who threw only 57 pitches in the quarterfinal game Wednesday.

"He didn't throw very much and he's going to come back strong," Driscol said.

East Marshall 400 002 0 - 6 7 3
Mid-Prairie    045 003 x - 12 14 2

Jake Dannen, Jake Bennett (2) and Gary Vanderah, Kyle Dougherty (2); Sean Thornton, Brock Yotty (6) and Chris Driscol. W - Thornton (5-2). L - Bennett (3-3). S - Yotty. HR - Layne Swartzentruber (MP), Brent Yotty (MP).