Todd Rose | Daily Press Gladstone’s Owen Trombley and Eastern Upper Peninsula’s Justin Carrick look up for the official safe call from officials at second base Friday evening during a Zone Five Legion Baseball Tournament in Gladstone.

GLADSTONE — Despite holding a four-run lead into the bottom of the fifth, the Gladstone Indians took a 14-9 loss against the Eastern Upper Peninsula Wood Ducks Friday evening in a Zone Five American Legion Baseball Tournament in Gladstone.

Wood Ducks manager Kris Bontranger said he felt lucky the team was able to grab the win.

“I’m not going to lie, I feel like we’re lucky that we got the win there,” Bontranger said. “I felt like we played pretty terrible baseball all day. But, (we had) a couple of big hits there at the end. You have to give the kids some credit. At times, at the end, they did come through.

“But, I really felt like we put ourselves in a big hole from the get-go and really felt like that last game was gifted to us a bit.”

One of the big hits came from the bat of Dalton Graham in the fifth inning. With bases loaded, Graham smacked a double to the outfield to bring in three runs and put the Wood Ducks on top 9-8.

Graham reached home from second on an Indians error to make it 10-8. They held on to the lead until the end, only allowing one more Gladstone run — Mason LaChance scoring on an Owen Trombley single — in the sixth inning.

Garrett Gorsuch (starter) and Jacques LaBlanc (closer) split time pitching for the Wood Ducks, while the Indians had a handful of slingers — Trevor Hanson (starter), Drake Forrest, Dylan Pepin and Lachance (closer) — take time atop the mound.

Like E.U.P., Gladstone also had a barrage of hits, the biggest being a three-run double from Forrest in the fifth.

Bontranger added that the Wood Ducks will need to fight Saturday and Sunday to have a chance the rest of the tournament.

“Well, 1-1 I guess still gives a chance,” he said. “We have to show up and play ball tomorrow. We come back here tomorrow and play like we did today. We’re probably going to have two more games.

“Then, we have to go home. We have to show up with a little more intensity, a little urgency, and play better baseball than what we did today.”

For Gladstone, the game was split into two halves, the good and the not-so-good.

“We were competitive and looking really good for half the game,” said Indians manager Scott Kwarciany. “But, in games like this — in playoff time — it usually comes down to errors, and we made some big errors. After those couple errors, they put up five or six runs. And (they were) errors that would have gotten us out of the inning.”

Moving on from the loss, Kwarciany hopes the Indians can use lessons learned from the game to rebound heading into the closing days of the tournament.

“It’s disappointing, but they’ll have to learn from this,” he said. “They’ve got a lot to play for yet tomorrow. They’ve still got a shot, but they’re going to need help now. But, it was disappointing considering how we played last night to come here today and not play as well.

“We’ll pick up from this and come back tomorrow and do it again.”

The Indians and Wood Ducks face off again this morning at 10 in Gladstone. In the afternoon, Eastern Upper Peninsula will play Dickinson County at 4:00 while Gladstone plays Menominee. Both of those contests will be played in Gladstone as well.