PINETOWN — The light at the end of the tunnel was well within sight when Northside hosted Bear Grass on Wednesday evening. The Panthers were wrapping up their toughest five-game stretch of the season. They trailed the Bears 4-3 entering the seventh inning and hoped to pick up their first win since April 13.

The visitors had other ideas. Bear Grass loaded the bases with no outs, effectively chasing relief pitcher Parker Boyd. The Bears ended up scoring four runs and quickly disposed of the Panthers en route to the 8-3 win.

“We got down a couple of runs early. We gave up some things on a mistake or two,” coach Keith Boyd said. “We don’t hang our heads, of course, and we kept battling. We leave baserunners on in the first two or three innings.”

Northside had the bases loaded with no outs early on, but left money on the table with three consecutive strikeouts.

“There were a lot of things offensively or defensively we could have hung our heads on,” Boyd added. “But we kept plugging and gave ourselves a shot there at the end. Credit to them. They laid down a couple of seeing-eye bunts. They got some runners on and they’re quick.”

Brock Marsh led off with a single in the bottom of the ninth as Northside hoped to make a remarkable comeback. Jensen Hawkins then grounded into a double play. Another groundout by Zach Woolard marked the end of the game.

The tough stretch, which resulted in a five-game losing streak, started at home against top-ranked East Carteret on April 15. Northside lost to the Mariners and then dropped three consecutive road games at Pamlico County, North Pitt and Jones Senior.

In this span, Northside’s pitching has carried the defense, but the work behind the mound has been taken advantage of. While the Panthers’ offense has been able to score enough to keep them in the game, the opposition has also been able to score in bunches.

“Pitching has been getting better, but our defense has been shaky at times,” Boyd said. “That’s the one thing I thought was going to be a constant for us, but we are what we are. I hate to keep saying we’re young, but we are. You just hope we learn from these things as the years go on and take it as a learning experience.”

Despite the losses piling up, that’s exactly what this stretch was: a learning experience.

“It’s us competing. That’s what I want to see,” Boyd said. “We don’t load our schedule up with a bunch of cupcakes. If we want to be good, we feel like we’ve got to play the good teams. Hopefully, we can gather confidence from being in games and learning how to win those types of games. That’s what gets you ready for the playoffs.”

Games against Lejeune and Southside separate Northside from the playoffs. The Panthers are almost certainly on the road at a higher seed in their first-round playoff game, so seeing all this elite competition late in the season should pay off.

“That’s the thing about it. You go into the playoffs and we’ve seen playoff pitching all season at the 1-A and 2-A level,” Boyd said. “We’ve seen playoff hitting and fielding and catching. That’s got to give us confidence going into whoever we play.”