Harbor Creek scored six first-inning runs and held off Warren, 9-6, on Thursday at Old Legion Field.

“We played six good innings; we’ve got to play seven to win games in this region,” said Warren coach Andrew Morrison, whose Dragons are 3-7 in Region 5. Harbor Creek improves to 6-4 in the region. “I’m glad we didn’t let the bad inning define us like it did the first time we played them, but we need to start winning these close games if we want to be a playoff team.

“We were much better offensively today,” added Morrison. “We saw some good velocity, but we were able to get into some good counts and do some damage. We have had several kids step up and give us great efforts in tough spots. Archie (Teconchuk) has come into the lineup and had great ABs. Brady (Berdine) and JT (Blum) did a great job filling in at short today with Konnor (Hoffman) being on vacation. Carson (Farr) came in and kept us in the game for four innings (pitching) like he always does.”

Teconchuk, Eric Dippold and Anthony Errett had two hits each for Warren.

Ben Sowa’s RBI single capped a three-run bottom of the second to cut the Huskies’ lead to 7-3.

Warren added three more runs in the fifth inning, keyed by singles from Errett and Teconchuk, but it wasn’t enough.

“I’m proud of this whole team and feel we are close to breaking through,” said Morrison. “It’s tough to learn on the fly as such a young team in a great region, but we aren’t giving up.”

Carter Cochran allowed one run in three innings to get the win in the junior varsity game. He also had an RBI double as did Andrew Neal. Aidan Zdarko had two hits, and Tyler Gern had a couple nice catches in left.