The Pilgrim Pats fell to the South Kingstown Rebels, 4-3, on Saturday afternoon at Old Mountain field. Pilgrim totaled 10 hits on the day, while South Kingstown had six.

Pilgrim squandered a chance with the bases loaded in the fifth inning that proved costly.

“This is our second game,” Pilgrim head coach Nolan Landy said. “We’ve left a lot of baserunners on. Our middle of the order guys are stalling a little bit. We’ve had one inning where we drove some runs in, so we got to keep building on that.”

South Kingstown sent junior Robert Brutti to the hill to start, and he ended the afternoon with six strikeouts while giving up just one run.

Pilgrim scored in the top of the first inning when Evan O’Connor led off with a single up the middle. Junior Sean Blanchard followed with a hit into shallow right field. Next, Matt Woods walked to load the bases for Pilgrim. With one out, Alec Bloomingburgh hit an RBI single to right field to score O’Connor, putting Pilgrim up 1-0.

Pilgrim junior Nick Laramee started on the mound for Pilgrim in the bottom of the first. He gave up a home run to South Kingstown’s first batter, Sam Kenyon, who tied the game at 1.

South Kingstown was able to load the bases after that. Then, Scott Camp drilled a single to score Asa Nyblom while putting South Kingstown up 2-1. With two down, senior Brenden Blessing scored from third on a passed ball, giving South Kingstown a 3-1 edge. Shortly after, Cole Podedworny was thrown out trying to steal home to end the first inning.

South Kingstown added to its cushion in the bottom of the second inning when Blaine Lidsky hit an RBI double off of the left field fence in left to go up 4-1. That proved to be the game-winning run.

Pilgrim tried to rally with two outs in the top of the fifth. Woods started with a walk. Next, catcher Kyle Denis hit a single. Then, South Kingstown went to its bullpen and brought in senior righty Stephen Woodmansee. Woodmansee hit Bloomingburgh, the first batter that he faced. However, the pitcher was able to get Bobby Hazelwood to ground out to escape the inning unscathed.

Pilgrim’s Ryan Maintain led off the top of the sixth with a single that ended with the batter standing at second after an error at first base. Junior Jacob Resendes followed it with a single to center. With runners at the corners, O’Connor hit an RBI single to score Resendes and pull Pilgrim within 4-2. Then, Blanchard hit an RBI single to left to score another run and drew Pilgrim closer at 4-3. With runners at first and second, South Kingstown’s Woodmansee struck out both Woods and Denis to escape the inning without any further damage. That is as close as Pilgrim would get.

After a rough couple of innings to start the game, the bullpen tandem of Tyler Parks and William Martino settled things down for Pilgrim, combining for four shutout innings.

“We booted the ball around a little bit there, but overall, I was happy with the way our pitchers threw,” Landy said. “The last two guys were sophomores. We kind of didn’t know what to expect, but I got to say Parks and Martino did very well.”

Landy believes the team needs to improve on defense, as well.

“The bottom line is we got to play better defense,” Landy added. “We made four errors today. We made six the other day. We can’t extend innings for the other teams to score.”