A once large cushion turned into a tense moment late. But with the help of fantastic defense, Lakeshore held on for a 7-4 victory at Witter Field in Wisconsin Rapids Friday night. 

The Chinooks jumped out of the gate quickly, loading the bases with just one out. Former Rafter Michael Jurgella (St. Cloud State) scored the first run of the game on an error by the first basemen.  Two batters later Connor Lynch (Georgia Tech) ripped a single to left that appeared to be enough to score multiple runs.  Jurgella scored easily, but Ty Kamps (UW-Oshkosh) was cut down at the plate for the third and final out of the inning. 

Lakeshore added on in the fourth thanks to a two RBI single from Forrest Chadwick (Southern Maine).  Chadwick also became the sixth player to reach fifty RBI in the Northwoods League this season.  Jurgella followed with an RBI double, pushing the lead to five.  Ryan Krill added a punctuation mark to the inning with yet another RBI hit, scoring Chadwick making it 6-0. 

Chinooks Starter Rex Morrow (Madison College) came out throwing the ball well.  The right hander only allowed one hit through the first 3 1/3 innings.   Then he hit a road block.  A one out single by Brandon Downs gave the Rafters their second base runner of the night.  Morrow came back to get Josh Cyr on strikes and he appeared poised to get out of the inning.  A wild pitch gave Alex Bacon a chance to hit with a runner in scoring position.  He quickly launched a long homerun to right field cutting the lead to four. 

The Rafters added single runs in the fifth and sixth innings to cut the lead to 6-4. 

Kevin Nutley (St. Norbert College) and Cody Peterson (Madison College) held their own in the sixth, seventh, and eighth innings out of the pen at one point retiring six in a row, to preserve the two run lead.

The Chinooks added an insurance run in the ninth on an RBI sacrifice fly by Ty Kamps to push the lead to three.

Wisconsin Rapids certainly made it interesting in the ninth, bringing the tying run to the plate with nobody out.  Cody Peterson was able to get the next hitter, Brandon Hohl, to ground into a 6-4-3 double play for the first two outs.  Pat Kelly flew out to centerfield to end the game. Lakeshore hung on for the 7-4 win.

The win pushed Lakeshore back to .500 at 34-34 (17-16 in the second half) for the season and all but guaranteed them a fourth place finish in the southern division.