RONDA -- Anna Litschke hit a pair of triples, and East Wilkes won a back-and-forth, high-scoring softball game against Alleghany on Tuesday evening.

The Cardinals jumped out to a 6-0 lead, then allowed the Trojans to score six straight runs before surging to a 12-8 triumph. The victory pushes East to 7-5 in Northwest 1A Conference play, right in the thick of the chase for an automatic state playoff spot.

"It was an ugly game defensively. They made a ton of errors, we made a ton of errors," East coach Bradley Hayes said. "But we just battled and we came out with a win."

Freshman Kary Durham earned the pitching victory for the Cardinals. Seniors like Kayla Johnson, Brooke Lyons and Bailey Ward did the brunt of the offensive work, along with Litschke.

Hayes said he's been focusing of late on taking advantage of base-runners in scoring position. On Tuesday, the Cardinals certainly did.

"That's been our Achilles heel. We'll have innings where we have bases loaded or runners at second and third, and we'll leave them for three outs," Hayes said. "We did a good job with that tonight. Of course their errors helped with that -- if you put the ball in play good things will happen."

The East Wilkes coach said he lost track of the number of miscues the two teams committed.

"They had a few key errors that really helped us out and allowed us to advance some runners," Hayes said. "We had a passed ball that we scored on. We had an infield hit which hit their third baseman over there. She was right underneath it and it rolled out of her glove. Their first baseman dropped a pop-up.

"Then when we came out we had an error at short, an error at center. It was like nobody wanted to win ... But we made the plays when we had to."

East could help its playoff cause with a couple more victories this week. The Cardinals host winless Elkin today at 4:30 p.m. They will then travel to Mount Airy on Friday. That contest starts at 6 p.m. The Granite Bears are breaking in new lights at their softball field, hence the later start time.

"Us, Mount Airy, North Stokes and South Stokes are all kind of knotted up around third, fourth and fifth place with four and five losses," Hayes said. "If we can win all three conference games this week, it will help our cause and could catapult us into third."