CAIRO — On a night when Chad Parkerson reached a milestone win, his Thomas County Central Yellow Jackets evened their season record.

Central improved to 5-5 Wednesday night with an 8-5 victory against Cairo.

It was the 100th win of Parkerson’s coaching career.

“I was thinking about it a little bit on the way over here, I guess you call it a milestone,” Parkerson said. “I feel very fortunate that coach (Ed) Pilcher hired me. I just think back on all the great players and great kids that I’ve coached and all of them that helped me get here.”

One of those players is catcher Logan Holland. He had a night to remember against Cairo, tallying four hits and three RBIs, two of which came on a home run over the left-field fence. Holland has six hits in his last seven at-bats.

“When he’s seeing it like that, you don’t say anything to him,” Parkerson said, “you just clap your hands.”

Holland helped lead a potent offensive attack that recorded 11 hits. Will Taylor and Parker Orr each added two hits.

“We don’t want a pitcher to have a breather in the lineup. I feel like we’re putting nine guys up there that can swing it,” Parkerson said. “Hopefully, it’ll continue.”

Central jumped on top 5-0 in the first inning. Josh Gobble, Holland, and Orr each had RBIs in the inning. Eric Johnson added a two-run triple. Unfortunately for Central and Parkerson, the Yellow Jackets were held to three runs over the final six innings.

“The frustration part of that is we’ll jump on them, then we’ll kind of let them hang around,” Parkerson said. “We need to stay focused like we were (Tuesday) night against Lee (County) and just put people away when we have a chance to.”

The Syrupmakers had their chances to tie or even take the lead throughout the game. Cairo stranded 13 runners on base, including leaving the bases loaded twice.

“It was unfortunate when we got ourselves into scoring opportunities, our batters weren’t able to put the ball in play in those situations,” Cairo (4-7) coach Ron Best said. “Give credit (to Central), their pitchers threw strikes when they needed to and we didn’t put the ball in play when we needed to.”

In the fifth inning, with Central up 8-4, Cairo loaded the bases with a single, hit batter and an error off Orr, in his first inning of relief.

Orr rebounded, however, with three straight strikeouts, two of which were called looking.

Cairo also hurt itself on the basepaths. With the bases loaded in the third inning, Cairo had a runner picked off first base by Holland at catcher. In the sixth inning, following a sacrifice fly that scored a run, Cairo had a runner thrown out at third base trying to advance.

“That’s our inexperience showing,” Best said.

“Those are sophomores and freshmen playing and making mistakes and learning from them, hopefully. We hope that we won’t make those same mistakes again.”