Staff photo / Neel Madhavan. Ursuline right fielder Joe Balog dives to attempt to catch a fly ball during the Irish's win over Canfield on Thursday at Bob Cene Park.

STRUTHERS — It was a bumpy start to the season for Ursuline, but the Irish have steadied the ship.

After winning its season opener, Ursuline proceeded to drop four straight games. However, this week, the Irish have won three straight to get back to .500 on the season, culminating with Thursday night’s 7-4 victory over Canfield at Bob Cene Park.

“They made some uncharacteristic mistakes that we had to take advantage of, but credit to them because they made things interesting and didn’t stop battling,” Ursuline head coach Paul Kempe said. “That was a gritty win for us. We’ve really bounced back in the last week. A week ago, we would have struggled to win a game like that, and I’m really proud of our guys.”

Ursuline got things started with a pair of runs in the top of the third inning that scored off a Canfield throwing error in the infield. Then an RBI sac fly from Zain Jadallah in the bottom of the third got the Cardinals on the board.

But a disastrous fourth inning by Canfield proved to be the difference in the game.

After only giving up one walk in the first three innings, Noah Anzerino walked the first three Ursuline hitters to lead off the top of the fourth inning. After a pitching change for Trent Rarick, another pair of bases-loaded walks led to two runs for the Irish.

Rarick momentarily calmed things down with a strikeout, but then another Ursuline run scored on a wild pitch. With the bases still loaded, a single from CJ Frasco scored two more runs for the Irish.

“We tell our guys to be patient and pick our spots and try to drive the ball,” Kempe said. “The big thing there is that they were struggling a bit to throw strikes, so we want to be smart, but we still want to stay aggressive with it, which is sometimes hard for high school kids. But the big thing is just putting the ball in play and letting things happen.”

After two more walks from Rarick, which included a successful pick-off at first base, Canfield head coach Gary Knittle made another pitching change, bringing in Sean Harrington to try to get the Cardinals out of the inning.

Harrington then grounded Ursuline’s Johnny Cambert out to second base, but the damage had been done. Seven walks by Canfield’s pitchers led to five Irish runs. The Cardinals finished with 10 walks for the game between four pitchers.

“I thought Noah pitched pretty well — he just started running out of gas,” Knittle said. “We went to one of our senior arms, and he just didn’t have it. It’s hard to watch. I think we had double-digit walks (for the game), and it’s hard to beat a good Ursuline team when you walk 10-plus guys.

“It’s hard to defend a walk, and we preached that to our pitchers. This is going to be a good learning lesson for us. It doesn’t matter what we do offensively, our pitchers gotta keep giving us a chance. Come tournament time, that’s what we gotta do.”

Despite the runs the Cardinals gave up, they out hit Ursuline 11-5 against Irish pitcher Anthony Triveri.

Jadallah was the primary source of scoring for Canfield, as he finished 2-for-3 at the plate, including two doubles and three RBIs. Tanner Stricko was 3-for-4 in the lead-off spot at the top of the lineup, while Joey Gabriel also had two hits and Michael Patellis added an RBI.

“Anthony Triveri — he’s a very good pitcher. I’ve known him since he was four years old,” Knittle said. “I knew it was a good arm for Ursuline and that we had our work cut out for us. We had really good approaches. We were very patient at the plate, and soft pitches that we liked, we hit balls hard. So that’s a positive that we’re going to take from this game.

“In the game of baseball, sometimes you hit a ball hard right at somebody and then the next day, you hit a weak pop up and it’s a base hit. It’s a crazy game.”

Even though Canfield was able to get hits off him, Triveri was steadfast on the mound for Ursuline. Through 6.2 innings of work, he threw four strikeouts with only three walks.

With the Cardinals loading the bases in the bottom of the seventh, Kempe elected to bring in Cambert for the final out of the game.

“Tell you what, (Triveri) was something special today. He was in attack mode,” Kempe said. “There were a couple plays where we made some blunders, but he never let that affect him. … He was getting close to 100 pitches. He wanted to go finish it out, and I wish I could have, but we’re also being smart about the kid right there. Johnny’s a kid who is going to come in and throw strikes. He was all over the place at first, but down 3-0 against a good hitter and coming back with three straight pitches, it shows his toughness.

“Our pitchers have been very good for us this year, and they’re tough guys. That’s a great baseball team who we’re probably going to see down the road. Credit to our guys for handling some adversity. They had no doubt in themselves, and that’s a big one for us. We told them, you gotta enjoy it, but we gotta come back and string another one together (today).”

Have an interesting story? Contact Neel Madhavan by email at nmadhavan@tribtoday.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @NeelMadhavan.