NEWPORT — Newport High baseball coach Matthew Robbins is often on the job by 3:30 a.m. at his manufacturing employer and works as a locksmith on the side. The Tigers’ boss somehow survives on four or five hours of sleep per night during the spring.

“My doctor’s been after me to do better for years,” Robbins said with a chuckle, shortly before Newport and Stevens met for the first of two NHIAA Division III games split between their home fields on Thursday.

Newport won the first game, 17-7, in six innings and it appeared Robbins was headed for a night of sweet dreams. The Tigers crashed to earth, however, when they lost the second contest, 29-4, at Claremont’s Barnes Park.

The split wasn’t intolerable, however, given Newport’s recent history. The Tigers were 7-35 during the three seasons before Robbins, a former Sunapee High player who’d been coaching his son, Devan, and his friends in youth baseball, took over last season. Newport went 1-15 last spring.

“We stayed in there and swung the bat, which I hadn’t seen in our first four games,” said Robbins, whose team improved to 3-3. “We were aggressive on the base paths and when we gave up runs, we put it behind us.”

Newport led, 9-0, after four innings in support of starting pitcher Kobie Curtis.

“He found the strike zone and threw the 0-2 curveball every now and then,” Robbins said. “We also got seven or eight outs on pop-ups where he threw it high on purpose with two strikes.”

The Cardinals (1-5) rallied for seven runs during the fifth, highlighted by Nevin Marsh’s two-run home run to left field, which ends abruptly in wetlands after perhaps 270 feet. Newport’s two-year old field lacks dugouts, foul poles and a scoreboard and abuts the marsh down the left field line.

The good feelings created during the top of the fifth inning didn’t last for the visitors, who committed numerous errors the rest of the way. Newport scored eight times during its half of the frame to end the game via the run rule. The teams then hustled west for the day’s second game.

“We’ve got to make a play,” said third-year Stevens coach Bill Bundy. “Way too many errors. You start giving the other team four and five outs per inning and you’re in trouble. You have to let a game like this go quickly. It’s a good learning experience for our guys.”

Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com.