Staff photo / Brian Yauger Grand Valley’s Jenna Poyer slides into home during Friday’s game against Brisol in Bristolville.

BRISTOLVILLE — Grand Valley picked up all sorts of valuable experience on Friday. For a young team still learning the ropes, the Mustangs were tested at every turn with wild momentum swings.

Both the Mustangs and Bristol traded blows for seven innings. Whenever Grand Valley extended its lead, Bristol had an answer. But Grand Valley picked up the win, downing the Panthers, 22-11.

“We’re a very young team,” Mustangs coach Kim Triskett said. “We have one senior and one junior out here. Everybody else is a freshman or a sophomore. It’s one of those learning experiences. It’s a great opportunity for us to kind of work through some of those momentum swings, and I thought we did a pretty good job of that early on. We were a little bit flat, we had a little lull, and then we started to pick up some steam, and we kept that energy up and we talked about energy, and that I think that was helpful for us.”

Having a young team comes with ups and downs, and that’s been all season for Grand Valley. Each time the Mustangs add to their lead, the Panthers rallied to inch closer. But Grand Valley (7-8) rolled with the punches and found an answer every time.

“Every game we’re learning on the fly. When we have so many young kids with minimal varsity experience, we just have to work through the obstacles,” Triskett said. “We have our ups and our downs and we just keep trying to push through and learn with every opportunity, and that’s what we try to encourage them to understand, because it’s easy to get down on yourself when we have mistakes. So we just try to learn through every opportunity and progress and get better with each time we get on the field.”

Nine times out of 10, if a softball team scores 11 runs, they’re winning, usually big. On Friday, Bristol scored 11 runs while fighting to keep the game going.

Staring a run-rule game in the face is never easy, but down by 10 runs heading into the bottom of the fifth inning, the Panthers kept their hopes alive and extended the game.

“Having the grit to (keep the game going) and I think that putting up as many runs as we did, it says a lot about us,” Bristol coach Katie Roman said. “We left a lot of base runners on unfortunately, but I do think that we can hit the ball. We just need to continue to play our game and make sure we clean up our defense.”

The Panthers (10-8) close out their regular season with games against Badger and Ashtabula St. John.

Grand Valley looks to keep preparing for its tournament-opener against Mineral Ridge, with contests against Badger and Mathews.