Nothing like a walk-off win for your new head coach.

Eric Dippold’s one-out line-drive base hit to left in the bottom of the seventh gave Warren’s baseball team a 3-2 Region 5 win over Erie High on Monday at Old Legion Field.

“It was a great game,” said first-year Warren coach Andrew Morrison.

Konnor Hoffman reached on a throwing error with one out in the bottom of the seventh. He raced all the way to third, and Erie intentionally walked both Ben Sowa and JT Blum to set up a force at any base. Dippold made sure that didn’t happen for 1-0 Warren.

“Obviously, that’s an exciting way to start the season,” said Morrison. “We had heard Erie was much-improved and we saw it firsthand. Huge to get a region win right off the bat and hold serve at home.

I was happy with our at-bats for the most part; a few times we bailed (Erie starter Jose) Quinones out early in counts and he’s too good to help out. I think we will keep getting better offensively as the season progresses. We have a lot of young guys out there and seeing 83 miles per hour outside is a little different than BP in the gym.”

Quinones struck out eight and walked one over six-plus innings, holding Warren to four hits.

“One thing we’ve been preaching to the guys is that we are going to be aggressive on the base paths and I think that worked in our favor today,” said Morrison. “We scored one run on a double steal, one off a rundown, and the other because Konner busted his butt down the line and ended up at third in the seventh. We aren’t a team that’s going to hit for a ton of power, so we have to manufacture runs.”

Warren’s pitching matched Quinones and the Dragons took advantage of a reliever in the seventh.

“Brady (Berdine) pitched awesome; his fastball command was great and he was able to keep them off-balance with his other two pitches,” said Morrison.

“Later in the year, that’s the kind of game he will probably stay in longer, but with him being a sophomore and it being so early in the year, we want to be smart with him.”

Berdine allowed one hit and two walks, striking out five over four innings.

“Eric (Dippold) and Owen (Blum) both came in and threw strikes which is what we asked them to do,” added Morrison. “A few bloopers fell on them, but they did a good job of not letting it faze them. We feel good about our pitching depth. We are going to give Archie (Teconchuk) the ball (today) and we are excited about it. We have Corry and Harbor Creek (both away) the next two days. Corry just beat McDowell 11-5 in their first game and they and Prep are the teams to beat in the region to me.”

Warren took advantage of six Erie errors in the win.