St. Aloysius had the winning run in scoring position and momentum on its side Tuesday against Cathedral.

It all went away with the zip of a fastball and the wind of a swinging bat.

The Lady Flashes, though, weren’t done in by their failures at the end of the game. It was the ones at the beginning that did them in.

McKenzie Milligan went 2-for-4 with a triple and three runs scored, Baylee Graning drove in two runs, and Cathedral used a fast start to beat archrival St. Al 5-4.

Cathedral jumped out to a 4-0 lead after two innings, then held on as the Lady Flashes made a furious comeback bid with two outs in the seventh inning.

“We waited too late to hit,” St. Al assistant coach Howard Park said. “They didn’t quit. I’m proud of them. We can compete. We just need to quit waiting until the last minute.”

Cathedral nearly blew the game open in the sixth inning, but with the bases loaded and no outs St. Al center fielder Allie Willis made a diving catch to rob Marty Lewis.

Had the ball fallen, it likely would have cleared the bases. Instead, the score remained 5-2 and the Lady Flashes got out of the jam unscathed.

“That was the play of the year,” Park said. “That ball falls and it’s 9-2. It was a game-saving catch.”

St. Al failed to score in its half of the sixth, then mounted a last-ditch comeback in the seventh.

Jordan McDonald started it off with a two-out single. Two dropped pop ups and a single by Michelle Howington followed, bringing in two runs and putting runners at second and third.

And that was where the magic ended.

Cathedral pitcher Elizabeth Smith froze Brantlee Richards with her first two pitches, wasted one, then got Richards to chase strike three for the final out.

“They hit the ball good. We hustled to them and couldn’t quite make the plays,” Cathedral coach Gary Blackwell said. “We knew coming up here it was going to be a battle. We knew they weren’t going to roll over.”

Smith finished the game with five strikeouts in seven innings. She scattered five hits and walked none. All four of St. Al’s runs were unearned as Cathedral committed seven errors.

Howington had two hits for St. Al (4-6-1, 0-3), which saw its playoff hopes take another hit. St. Al is winless within the division and needs to string together a winning streak down the stretch to reach the postseason.

“We’re going to be a competitive third-place team. If we take third place,” Park said, noting that St. Al can still finish as high as second. “We’ve got a little work to do.”