WENDELL — East Wake’s Central Carolina Scholastic Summer Baseball League team looked to have things under control, but gave up a run in the top of the fifth and sixth innings to drop a game to South Central, 3-2, Thursday night.

The Warriors (4-2) took the early lead after Wes Luck slapped a grounder to take first base. A series of steals and overthrows allowed Luck to round the diamond for the team to go up 1-0.

But the Warriors returned the favor to the visitors in the fourth with overthrows of their own, one of which came after a decoy blooper on the second base line. Zach Bouren, catching for the Warriors, saw the Falcon slip-up and took the bait. He fired high in the confusion and the overthrow to second allowed a South Central run.

The home team regained its one-run lead in the bottom of the same inning when Parker Roach smacked a ball through the infield, plating Murphy Tyndall.

As the old saying goes, you can’t win a ball game if you don’t hit the ball. That’s especially true if the other team is working around the bases, conventionally or unconventionally. The bottom of the fourth marked the beginning of a batting dry spell for the Warriors, and South Central’s (4-1) two runs over the next two innings were enough to squeeze out the win.

“In the top of the fifth, South Central took advantage of a lead off walk, fielders choice and in the end the runner pulled an unconventional score,” coach Kerry Kincaid said. “In the sixth they smacked a homer and that was it.”

In bottom of the seventh East Wake managed to load the bases. With two outs and runners on first and second, Ian Hasbrouck hit a single to load the bases. Kincaid said he probably should’ve sent his runners on through, but with two outs he held the runners on base. Sam Winegar, like Garrett Johnson earlier that same inning, struck out, and South Central left town the victor.

“We had more hits, they just had them at the right time,” Kincaid said. It wasn’t so much them scoring, but we didn’t turn the double play when needed. With more timely hitting around South Central we could’ve got them, we just had those walks come through at the [wrong] time.”

The Warriors made up for the loss with an 8-2 win over Chapel Hill Saturday.

The win was a perseverance contest after the team went up 8-0 after two innings.

“We kind of went into cruise control mode — we just shut it down, it was hot, we never really swung the bats after that, but didn’t need to,” Kincaid said.

Johnson started on the mound, giving up nothing to the opponents, and Jonathan Waszak threw the other four innings to record the win.

“We’re doing alright right now, Kincaid said. “We aren’t really hitting well as a team overall, but considering that were doing pretty good.”

Prior to the game against South Central, East Wake’s only other loss of the season came against Panther Creek less than two weeks ago. The three other Warrior wins have come in the form of a 5-1 win over Garner, a 3-0 win over Sanderson and an 11-6 win over Wake Forest-Rolesville.