Staff photo by Travis Rosenau New Ulm Cathedral’s Elijah Rieser makes a diving catch attempt in left-center field in front of center fielder Colin Anderson during a Tomahawk Division baseball game Monday at Mueller Park.

NEW ULM — New Ulm Cathedral took a 9-1 lead after five innings and then hung on for a 12-7 win over Sleepy Eye Monday afternoon in a Tomahawk Division baseball game at Mueller Park.

Caleb Forstner got the win for Cathedral (12-1, 9-1). He allowed eight hits and struck out four.

Brayden Heiderscheidt took the loss for Sleepy Eye (7-6, 5-5). He was charged with nine runs in 4 1/3 innings.

Elijah Rieser led the Greyhounds with four hits. Jake Finstad, Colin Anderson, Joey Schugel and Evan Blekestad each had two hits.

Finstad had five RBIs, with Rieser driving in three.

Kayden Klein and Chase Zufall each had two hits for Sleepy Eye.

“It was not our cleanest game,” Cathedral head coach Alan Woitas said. “We had that [sixth] inning where we did not make some plays (four errors led to four runs). But I thought that Caleb did a real nice job of not giving in — he did not walk a batter — and was a bulldog to get through all seven innings.”

Sleepy Eye head coach Aaron Nesvold felt that his team played pretty well.

“When you give Cathedral a bunch of extra bases they are going to take advantage of them,” he said. “But I thought that we responded well. We made some good plays defensively, but then we had some miscues on throws both in the infield and outfield.”

The Greyhounds, who have a big road doubleheader Thursday at Springfield, took a advantage of those Indians’ miscues to score an unearned run in the second and two more in the third with Anderson’s double making it a 3-0 lead.

The Indians, who play crosstown rival St. Mary’s on Thursday, cut the lead to 3-1 in the top of the fourth on a Klein single.

But the Greyhounds used score three runs in the bottom of the fourth on a two-run Finstad single and a wild pitch.

Cathedral added three more in the fifth on a Joey Schugel double, a Blekestad base hit and a Finstad triple.

Sleepy Eye countered with four unearned runs in the top of the sixth before Cathedral added three insurance runs in the bottom of the sixth with two coming off of Rieser’s fourth hit of the game.

“We had a lot of different guys hit the ball — Rieser had some big hits that drove in some runs,” Woitas said. “We had contributions one through nine in the batting order. And we did not strike out in the game today. Springfield is playing good baseball and they are the team to beat coming off last year and we are looking forward to being challenged on Thursday.”