Saranac came out swinging and put five runs on the board in the first inning, following that up with a seven-run second inning. Lake Placid catcher Shannon Bentley caught a pop fly between home and first base for the Bombers’ first out of the second inning, but when Saranac’s Tori Wells hit a ground-rule double that brought in two more runs, the home team switched pitchers with Grace Crawford taking over in the circle.

Crawford managed to leave the bases loaded in top of the fourth, and Bentley came up first in the bottom of the inning. Bentley made it to first on a hit up the third base line, and pinch runner Matilde Macconi took over for Bentley. Macconi advanced to second on a hit by Carsyn Rissberger, but Rissberger was forced out at first.

Danaya Patterson struck out and Crawford hit a fly ball that was caught to halt the Bombers’ offense.

In the top of the fifth, Lake Placid senior Makeda Thompson came up with two big plays in a row. With Saranac runners on first and second, Thompson fielded a grounder at third base and touched the bag for the force out. On the next pitch, Thompson snagged a line drive out of the air for the Bombers’ second out of the inning. Alyssa Hoffman came up with a catch in shallow right field to put the home team back on offense.

Lake Placid pitcher Grace Crawford throws a pitch during Friday’s home loss to Saranac Central. (Enterprise photo — Justin A. Levine)

In the bottom of the fifth, Lake Placid was facing a mercy rule ending, and despite Sophia Adragna getting walked and Sara McKillip taking a pitch to the foot to put Bombers on first and second, Saranac Central blanked the home team to end the game.

The Chiefs improved to 4-4 on the season with the win, and coach Sam Campbell said his team has played well so far.

“We played well today,” he said. “We hit the ball, we ran the bases. Everything we needed to do. We’ve picked up a couple things tonight that we’re going to address with our base running and at the plate.”

Lake Placid sophomore Natalie Tavares said her team has improved during its condensed season, when weather limits their time to practice outside.

“I think we played better than we usually do,” she said. “The problem with us is our batting isn’t that good. Our fielding was definitely better than it has been.”

The Blue Bombers fell to 1-5 on the season, but first-year coach Greg Hayes said he’s seen improvement, although the lack of practices has hampered progress.

“We played OK,” he said. “We had a couple errors in the field that cost us some runs, but we’ve been working on squaring up our defense, and they played better than they have been. We just can’t seem to get our bats going.

“We’re playing almost every day, so we don’t have much time to work. We’re playing tomorrow (Saturday) and we have a game Monday, Wednesday and Friday next week, so the closest chance we’ll get (to practice) is Tuesday and we’ll probably just work on hitting and see how it goes from there.

“It’s getting better,” he continued. “It’s hard when you take two weeks off right at the beginning before the season starts and you have to go right out on the field. Our first outside time was a game; I think we’ve had only three practices since we got outside.”

The Blue Bombers travel to Northern Adirondack Central School for a game Saturday at 3 p.m.