Warren Central and Madison Central engaged in one of slow-pitch softball’s oddities, a pitchers’ duel, for five innings Tuesday.

It quickly turned into something almost as rare these days — a Warren Central loss.

Madison Central took advantage of a series of missteps by the Lady Vikes to score four runs in the top of the sixth inning, and went on to win 5-1 in the division opener for both teams.

It was just the second loss of the season for WC, whose record fell to 8-2 overall.

“It’s just not focusing all the time. We’ve got to stay there for seven innings and can’t have one lapse. But we’re playing better, so I’m not too disappointed,” WC coach Dana McGivney said. “We’ll take that after 10 games. It’s much better than it was last year after 10 games. We’ve improved, and we’re just going to keep working to improve.”

Madison Central (5-1, 1-0 Division 2-6A) scored once in the first inning, then neither team scratched a run across until the sixth.

Claire Hobson led off with a sharp grounder that got past two WC fielders for a double error. That was followed by three walks — one with the bases loaded — an RBI single by Kristen Qualls and a two-run double by Mya Hopson.

When the dust settled, Madison Central had sent nine batters to the plate and taken a 5-0 lead.

“We didn’t hit the ball at all in the beginning of the ballgame. We’ve been scoring a lot of runs, so we were just really flat offensively. We just put a couple of hits together to get some more runs on the board,” Madison Central coach Kayla Watkins said. “I told them in the fifth if they didn’t put some runs on the board, (WC) was going to slip up and beat us 2-1. So getting those couple of runs late in the game were big.”

The Lady Vikes had a chance to get back in it in the bottom of the sixth. Darby Gain delivered a two-out, RBI double to plate their first run and put runners at second and third. The next batter flew out to left, however, to end the best of several scoring opportunities.

WC had runners on base in every inning, but managed just the one run. Two runners were stranded in both the sixth and seventh innings.

“We just weren’t waiting on the ball. Weren’t patient. In slow-pitch, that’s the key is waiting on the ball to drop and then hitting it. It’s all about being patient,” McGivney said.