Jamie Glenn/Daily Mining Gazette Sayen’s Auto Sales’ Brogan Turner connects on a pitch during Portage Lake Little League Majors action Thursday at Veterans Field in South Range.

SOUTH RANGE — Two evenly matched Portage Lake Little League Majors baseball teams met at Veterans Field on Thursday with Sayen’s Auto Sales holding off Chassell VFW for a late 4-3 victory.

Chassell VFW (3-1 overall) got things rolling in the bottom of the first inning with Nick Andrews leading off with a walk. He moved to third and later scored, giving previously undefeated Chassell an early 1-0 advantage.

In the top of the second, Sayen’s (3-1 overall) evened things up when third baseman Kirby Storm took advantage of a dropped ball to touch home plate.

Sayen’s manager Dan Sayen was really pleased with the efforts of his team.

“I think they did really well,” said Sayen. “We scored some timely runs.”

Sayen was not kidding.

In the top of the third, Brayden Larson, who was good on the mound for Sayen’s, helped himself by getting on base with a single. Two batters later, Jack Sayen homered to give his team a 3-1 lead.

“Brayden Larsen pitched a complete game,” said coach Sayen. “He did his 85 pitches and got through the whole game. Jack Sayen had a home run and all the kids made great infield plays that they needed to make.”

Tim Brown and Lane Johnson had back-to-back singles, both later scored, pulling Chassell back to even at 3-3 in the bottom of the third.

The tie lasted until the sixth, when Jack Sayen earned himself “hero status” by first walking and then taking advantage of a defensive error to come around and score, giving Sayen’s the lead for good.

Jeff Williams, Chassell manager, changed things up on the mound throughout the night and saw the adjustments working well despite the end result.

“Things went really great,” said Williams. “We routed (through) three different pitchers, which we haven’t done in a while. It worked out well because it kept our pitching fresh. The kids played really well.

“We had one really nice dive in the outfield by Clay Anderson. He had a dive for the ball. It was a beautiful catch.”

With a game up in Laurium Saturday, Williams fully expects his team to bounce back quickly.

“We play up at George Gipp on Saturday and we’re just going to go at it the same way,” he said. “We’re a good pitching team. We’re going to keep with the rotation of three pitchers and keep it at that because our batting is pretty solid (and) our pitching rotation is so good.”

Sayen’s Auto will face the Keweenaw Lions on Saturday.

“We play here (South Range) again on Saturday,” said coach Sayen. “We play a team from Calumet that we don’t know anything about and we’re going to prepare by trying to make less mistakes than we did today (Thursday).”