Staff photo / Brian Yauger Chalker pitcher Tatum Hudak delivers a pitch against Mineral Ridge on Wednesday in Southington.

SOUTHINGTON — After a red-hot start, Chalker withstood a late-inning rally from Mineral Ridge to take down the Rams, 9-5, on Wednesday night.

“This was a real good gauge of where we’re at and what we need to keep working on to get to where we need to be,” Wildcats coach Rich Hudak said. “This is good. Teams like this, they force you and you gotta be on top of things. When you’re not, those couple little errors and misplays, they’re gonna take advantage of that.

“Good teams do that, and that’s good for us. It’s good for us to see that and keep building.”

Chalker built themselves a cushion early, opening the game with five runs across the first three innings.

Against a team like Mineral Ridge, setting the tone as quickly as possible was crucial.

“It’s important anytime (you play),” Hudak said. “Just get out there early and set the tone with the bats and just get some runs on the board. One thing we put a lot of pride in is no runners left on base. We want to get everyone on, get them moved around and get them home if we can. You never know, that one run could be what you need. Like today, because we needed those extra runs. We’re a very good heads-up baserunning team. We take a lot of pride in that, and it comes from a lot of years of experience.”

The win moves Chalker to 3-0 on the season. With weather impacting so many games, teams have to get creative with matchups. Sometimes they come together quickly, like Wednesday’s game, which came together less than 24 hours before start time.

For Mineral Ridge, the loss bumps them to 5-2 on the season. They wanted a quality test and found one in the Wildcats.

The Rams’ bats came alive in the fourth, getting their first run on the board. They continued piling on in the fifth and six, clawing their way back.

Unfortunately for Mineral Ridge, they were stalled out in the seventh and couldn’t force extra innings.

“I mean, once we got to get hits going, we were good,” Rams co-head coach Joe Merolillo said. “The defense struggled in the beginning. I know it’s cold, but we tell them that we still got to make the throws, we still have to make the plays that we know how to. That’s not the team that we are and we know that.”

Defense is the focus for Mineral Ridge going forward. Scheduled to face a tough Boardman team on Friday, Mineral Ridge looks to tighten up that aspect of the game.

“I think when we play clean defense and we hit the ball, we tend to win the games,” co-head coach Will Sandy said. “I thought our pitching was pretty solid today. They have a couple nice hits there, but for the most part, I thought our pitching kept us in the game. It was our defense that let us down today.”

The Wildcats are scheduled to face Lordstown today and travel to Grand Valley on Friday before a tri-match with Poland and Jefferson on Saturday.