It’s early, but the Lakeview Huskies played their best game of the season yet on Friday.

Coming off back-to-back mercy losses, the Huskies made big plays in big moments to take out the Utica Chieftains, 9-6, on the warmest afternoon of the season so far.

“It’s been 40 degrees and freezing, and it’s not been a joy to get up to the plate and hit,” said Lakeview head coach Kevin Nugent. “Now, some of the teams have been doing a good job of it, but we haven’t. But today was a breakout day.”

The Huskies scored twice in the top of the first inning thanks to a wild pitch followed by an RBI single from Addison McQueen, but the offense went quiet for the next three against Utica starter Ava Mazza.

Then, trailing 5-2 in the fifth, they broke out.

Morgan Kliffel walked then scored on an RBI triple by starting pitcher Isabella Hollis. Singles by Coryn Kliffel and Lorelei Rubino followed, then they were cashed in with a three-run home run by Alana Stearns in what may have been the biggest hit of the season for Lakeview so far.

Hollis, who threw a complete game, and Stearns, her catcher, are the battery for Lakeview — figuratively and literally — with their tandem up the middle and always-on energy and hustle.

“Isabella is a good player, and she’s a competitor,” Nugent said. “You see it like, and everything she’s doing, she’s like our emotional player. But not like, ‘out of control’ emotional, but just like, she’s in the game, she gets a strikeout, and we were down nine. She’s like, ‘I’m excited I got that strikeout.’

“You saw Alana’s playing balls off the backstop today, like catching them, because it’s just what she does.”

Lakeview added their eighth and ninth runs in the top of the sixth off passed balls. Those, combined with five Utica errors and some untimely hitting, did the Chieftains in.

“We let them back in,” said Utica head coach Deonna Giacona. “We were hitting the ball well, but our errors, errors are going to kill a game. They’re gonna kill the momentum, and that’s what happened to us today, just timely hitting on their part and errors on our part.”

Utica scored in four of the first five innings — Rachel Durecki drove in three runs, Kylie Condon one and Violet Smith another — to lead 5-2 in the fourth inning before Lakeview put together their rally.

Part of Utica’s woes come from having a mix of young players with little varsity experience and having veterans playing new positions to accommodate.

For example, Alora Hogsten, who played infield last season, has moved behind the plate for the “first time in years.”

Giacona said that the Chieftains are battling a learning curve but is confident that they’ll catch up.

“We just need to be able to keep up with the pace of the game, and we also need to make sure that we’re limiting our errors and our strikeouts,” Giacona said. “We have to be more selective at the plate. We have to execute when we have runners in scoring position. We have to be able to score those runners. But then, literally, we would just really have to worry about our focus on our errors and fixing that, cleaning up that.”

Durecki led the team with two hits and three RBIs. Starting pitcher Ava Mazza was tagged for seven runs on 10 hits in 4.1 innings, and Violet Smith threw the last 2.2, allowing two runs (one earned). Smith also had three hits, a game-high.

While Utica struggled in the field, Lakeview had one of their better games — though they committed two errors, neither led to any runs. Their left fielder, Alivia Prasnjak, had never played the position and was one of four freshmen in the field for Lakeview. Prasnjak answered the challenge by smashing two hits.

“It was a catch here, catch there,” Nugent said. “Like, we have not had things go well for us in bunches. And so today we strung together some good plays. So it was fun to see.”

Lakeview improved to 2-2 this season with all of their games being against fellow Macomb Area Conference White teams. The Chieftains are 3-4 and 1-3 in the White.