It was a week in which Park battled top-10 ranked teams close but saw only a big 8-2 win over rival East Ridge. Park fell to No. 2 Stillwater, No. 4 White Bear Lake twice and Winona, ranked No. 3 in Class 3A.

The Wolfpack lost at Winona by one run – Park’s third one-run loss of the season – and at White Bear Lake Monday 2-0.

White Bear Lake 9, Park 0 Park couldn’t generate any offense in a 9-0 loss at home against visiting and fifth-ranked White Bear Lake (13-2) Tuesday.

Stillwater 7, Park 1

Second ranked and conference leader Stillwater (16-1) took a 7-1 win over the host Wolfpack on Wednesday.

Park 8, East Ridge 2

Park’s defense and pitching keyed the Wolfpack’s 8-2 win over visiting East Ridge for a big Suburban East Conference victory Friday.

“We have played poor defense up until today,” said Park head coach Bob Loshek. “Then we make spectacular play after spectacular play to get out of each inning.”

Starting pitcher Gracie Bond gave up 11 hits and five walks, while striking out four. But every time Park got in trouble early, the defense rose to the challenge and held the Raptors without a run. East Ridge went scoreless until pushing across two runs in the top of the seventh inning.

“I felt I got behind in more counts than I would’ve liked,” said Bond. (The strike zone) was definitely smaller than what we saw at Stillwater. It was an adjustment, no excuse but it was an adjustment.”

“Gracie battled, Gracie did a great job today,” said Loshek. “The zone was very tight and when you’re used to getting the corner here and there, then you can kind of play with that corner instead she had to come a little bit more around the middle which nobody likes to do. No pitcher likes to do that.

“Yea, we missed signs today,” Loshek added. “We did some stuff that wasn’t characters of us, but you know what we did today, we played great defense. We played outstanding defense. When you give other games away to the top teams in the state and East Ridge has some of the top hitters in the state, you can’t just give runs away. So, we did a really good job of playing defense behind Gracie and started showing that all the hard work we’ve been doing in practice is paying off.”

Winona 4, Park 3

Third-ranked in 3A, host Winona escaped an upset bid from visiting Park with a seventh-inning rally Saturday.

Winona (16-1) took a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning, but Park battled back with a run in the fifth and two more in the top of the seventh to take a 3-2 lead.

Unfortunately for the Wolfpack, they couldn’t hold it as Winona scored twice in the bottom of the seventh to gain the 4-3 victory.

White Bear Lake 2, Park 0 Park suffered another tough loss to a ranked team, falling 2-0 to No. 4t White Bear Lake Monday.

Park (11-5, 11-6) wraps up the regular season this week with games at Roseville (10-4. 10-4) Wednesday and then at winless Irondale (0-14, 0-16) on Friday. The winner of the Park-Roseville game likely finishes second in the SEC this season.

Park’s Emma Ambroz beats the throw to home to score for the Wolfpack against rival East Ridge in an 8-2 win Friday. Photo by John Molene