NATCHEZ — The Cathedral School softball team’s season came to an end in heart-breaking fashion Saturday afternoon with a 9-7 loss to Sebastopol in nine innings.

Cathedral made several defensive mistakes and caught a few bad breaks to fall just short of forcing a decisive third game in the second-round playoff series.

“It was a battle, it was a war zone today,” Cathedral coach Gary Blackwell said. “(We had) a couple of miscues and had some breaks that didn’t go our way. If they had (gone our way) we would have been on the winning side.”

One example of the bad breaks that went against the Green Wave came in the bottom of the eighth inning.

With the game tied Cathedral left fielder Laura Ellett hit a ground ball to Sebastopol third baseman Lacey Hedrick. Hedrick threw the ball away at first base and as Ellett was rounding second she ran straight into an umpire. Ellett fell to the ground and was tagged out.

Instead of the winning run being on second with one out, the bases were empty with two outs when Shannon Mire came up and smacked a double to center field. McKenzie Milligan could not bring Mire home and the game went into another extra frame.

Sebastopol scored three unearned runs on three Green Wave errors in the top of the ninth. Cathedral was only able to answer with one of its own in the bottom of the inning to fall two-runs short.

Blackwell said both teams hit the ball well. Sebastopol had eight hits while Cathedral had 10. The teams combined for 12 errors on the day, seven were committed by Cathedral.

Mollie Devening went all nine innings in the circle for Cathedral, giving up just three earned runs. She struck out eight, walked one and gave up eight hits.

Devening also starred at the plate. She went 2-for-4 with a home run and a double.

Peyton Monticello and Shannon Mire added doubles of their own, and Ginny Daggett tripled and scored in her first at bat.

With the 2-0 series loss to Sebastopol, the young Cathedral teams ends its season at 19-11-1 overall.

“This is a great group of kids who love the game,” Blackwell said. “It was a treat to coach them, they come (to practice) every day and take care of business.”

This season’s team featured just two juniors and no seniors, so Blackwell thinks he will have a good team returning next season, he said.

“We try to learn from our mistakes,” Blackwell said. “This will hurt them bad enough, and they will (use that for next year).”

Blackwell said this is the third season in a row the Green Wave has lost in the second round of the playoffs.

“We have to break that jinx,” he said.