The game hung in the balance until the eighth inning, when St. Charles  began tearing off seven runs to break away with an 8-1 victory.Coach Kevin Shough felt his Warrenton Post 122 Senior Legion team had befuddled its visitors to that point, with Taylor Duvel holding control on the mound.“Taylor pitched a great game up until that point, and then they started hitting him,” said Shough. “We may have left him in a little too long.”He gave up just five hits through eight innings, but it was a pivotal fielding mistake that seemed to open the floodgates. Once St. Charles punched through its first run, there was no stopping.“The missed ground ball base hit that should have been an out was the start of it, but we could also say that for a lot of things,” said Shough. “When we missed that, we started struggling with some other things.”An error at third base allowed St. Charles to keep the eighth inning going, and it added a double and triple to begin pushing runs across. Still, Post 122 trailed just 4-1 heading into the ninth.“We still had a shot, but we couldn’t get anything going with their bats, and we couldn’t seem to stop them in the last two innings,” said Shough.Kenny Dildine came in to close during the ninth, but immediately found himself in a tough predicament after walking the first two batters. St. Charles took advantage, connecting on a double and closing the game with a two-run home run.Dildine finished having given up four hits and four earned runs.With his team striking out 10 times and making limited appearances on the base paths, Shough says missed opportunities came back to haunt Post 122.“We didn’t capitalize a couple times we had second and third with one out,” said Shough. “We struck out twice in those situations.”Shough says his team seems to struggle with closing games, especially during the final two innings.“We seem like we hold all these teams for about seven innings real well, but then we make some critical errors that prevent us from winning,” said Shough.He says the final score wasn’t indicative of how the game unfolding as a whole.“Overall, I was pretty happy with the way they played,” said Shough. “We easily could have won that game, even though the score doesn’t show that.”Warrenton managed just four hits, with one each coming from Hunter Capstick, Corey Eckenfels, Donovan Mozee and Airk Rader.RUSSELL EYES HOMEDerrick Forsythe photo.