FLOWOOD — As the ball arced slowly toward the plate and settled into the catcher’s glove, Shawn Johnson lazily tossed her bat toward the dugout and started down the first base line. The umpire’s call of “strike two,” rather than “ball four,” stopped her in her tracks.

After a moment of disbelief, Johnson swung at the next pitch and hit a line drive to the second baseman for the second out in a 1-2-3 inning.

It was just that kind of day for Warren Central. A day where few things went right, opportunities were missed, the Lady Vikes’ weaknesses exposed in painful fashion. Northwest Rankin took full advantage of every minute of it, too, sweeping WC from the Class 5A slow-pitch playoffs with wins of 8-1 and 7-6 on Tuesday.

“They had a great season. We accomplished a lot,” said WC coach Lucy Young, whose team finished the year with a 22-6 record. “We beat a lot of good teams. In July, we started preparing for today. We lost to a good team.”

Northwest Rankin (20-10) hammered the Lady Vikes in game one of the best-of-three series, 8-1. Londen Ladner went 2-for-3 with a home run and four RBIs, and her three-run, over-the-fence homer in the bottom of the fourth inning gave the Lady Cougars a 7-0 lead. Every Northwest starter had at least one hit by the fourth inning, and the Lady Cougars took care of their offense with four runs in the second and four more in the fifth.

Warren Central, which has struggled to find consistency at the plate all season, didn’t find it in the first game. It didn’t get a runner past second base until Mandy Fuller tripled with one out in the seventh. Fuller later scored WC’s only run on Andi Hearn’s single.

Part of the reason for WC’s struggles, Young said, was Northwest outfielder Morgan Foster. She played a shallow outfield spot and scooped up several balls that either kept runners from advancing or caught others that would have dropped in front of a normal outfield alignment.

“They played us well, using that rover in the middle. It took away a lot of our shots,” Young said. “She worked that middle and picked up everything that would’ve normally been in that gap between the other outfielders.”

Northwest pitcher Victoria Bass also helped her team’s cause by throwing high pitches to the Lady Vikes. That resulted in a number of lazy fly balls, instead of hard-hit grounders that could have resulted in errors or hits. Of the 42 outs WC made in the series, 31 came on either fly balls or strikeouts caused by foul balls.

“We pitched them a little higher, and we had a report that they foul out a lot so we tried to make them chase,” Northwest coach Mike Armstrong said, adding that Foster’s play not only helped Northwest on Tuesday, but over the last month of the season as well. “We’ve won 13 of 15 since we went to the rover. The biggest thing is, we had a good scouting report.”

Although the Lady Vikes struggled all afternoon, they did rebound well from their drubbing in game one. Andi Hearn — who was 5-for-6 in the series — hit a two-run, over-the-fence home run and Bridget Dillon went 3-for-3 with a double, two RBIs and two runs scored as the Lady Vikes actually outhit Northwest 10-9.

Four WC errors led to two runs, though, and Northwest scored three runs in the fourth inning and two more in the sixth to take a 7-4 lead. WC cut it to 7-6 in the bottom of the sixth on Mandy Fuller’s RBI double and Dillon’s RBI single, and had two runners on with two out in the bottom of the seventh. Bass got Tiffany Fuller to fly out, however, putting a fitting cap on the game. The ball settled into the glove of Foster for the final out.

“We hit better in the second game, and the last couple innings of the first game. Had we started that earlier, the outcome would’ve been different,” Young said. “A couple more key hits at the right time and it would’ve turned around.”