Staff photo / Preston Byers Canfield’s Joey Gabriel delivers a pitch during Monday’s win vs. Marlington in Canfield.

CANFIELD — The Canfield baseball team defeated Marlington in its home opener Tuesday, surviving a tense seventh inning to earn a 2-0 victory.

Cardinals closer Zain Jadallah endured a walk, hit and stolen base in the top of the seventh before striking out Logan Smith to hold off the Dukes for Canfield’s first home win of the season.

“We talk a lot about execution, throwing strikes, and we only had one free pass today, which was great. Hit a lot of balls hard at them. They played great defense, which is going to happen, and we made some mistakes on the bases. But you never trade away a win,” Canfield coach Matt Weymer said. “It’s early in the season. Pitching and the defense, it’s usually ahead of the offense until it warms up. So you’ll take a win any day. Happy to win.”

Although much of the rest of the game would prove to be low-scoring, Canfield jumped out to an early lead. In the bottom of the first inning, David Murphy drilled a ball into center field to score a runner from second base.

The Cardinals could have added to their lead, but Marlington starting pitcher Brock Woods managed to get out of a bases-loaded situation and leave three runners stranded to end the first inning.

Canfield left another runner in scoring position at the conclusion of the second, and after a Logan Patellis RBI double in the fourth inning, left runners on second and third base.

Much like the first inning, Canfield also struck out to end the fifth inning with the bases loaded.

“Anytime you get a chance to kind of blow the game open, you really want to cash in on those,” Weymer said. “A lot of times, we talk about the process. Sometimes all you can do is put a good at-bat together, and then if you hit a ball hard and they make a play, then that’s the breaks.

“Some of those at-bats, you’d like to have back. And you got to tip your hat to Marlington too. When they needed to make a pitch, they made the pitch. When they needed to make the play, they made the play. But yeah, we were desperately trying to get some breathing room there late in the game.”

More breathing room would have helped the Cardinals greatly in the seventh.

Leading 2-0, Jadallah entered the game, relieving Noah Anzevino, who had mostly picked up where starter Joey Gabriel had left off and held Marlington to just a few hits and and even fewer runners in scoring position.

Possibly sensing the urgency, however, the Dukes made sure Jadallah would not have as simple of an outing as either Gabriel or Anzevino.

Dylan Heatherington led off the inning with a walk, instantly giving Marlington life.

Jadallah rebounded with a strikeout of Woods, who had crushed a pitch to deep left field in the fourth inning. Garett Dillon then flew out to right field, bringing the Dukes to their final out.

After Heatherington stole second, Landon Hawthorne kept the game going with an infield bloop that fell softly in front of Canfield’s third baseman. Hawthorne made it to first and Heatherington advanced to third base as a result.

Before Smith, who would be the go-ahead run, entered the batter’s box, the Cardinals met at the mound.

“Pound the zone,” Jadallah said of the meeting’s contents. “And we were making sure — it was a first-and-third situation — we were just making sure that if the runner goes, the runner stays, what to do. We were all meeting about that and to just throw strikes, attack the batter at the bottom of the order, let him put it in play with two outs.”

The strategy paid off; Jadallah attacked and eventually struck Smith out to keep a Marlington runner from crossing home plate Tuesday.

The win was Canfield’s second of the season after a 6-1 season-opening road victory vs. Massillon on Saturday and a 4-1 away loss to Louisville on Monday.

After Tuesday’s triumph, the Cardinals engaged in a lengthy team meeting in shallow right field.

“We played two pretty emotional games the first two games,” Weymer said, “and I thought tonight we were a little lifeless… We just had a lot of energy [in the first two games], and then tonight, we were kind of flat, I thought, in the dugout and other things.”

Still, Weymer, in his first year as the Cardinals’ head coach, is looking forward to keeping the proverbial ball rolling in Canfield.

“Taking over a program like this that has a history like our program does, this isn’t a situation where you’re starting from scratch,” Weymer said. “There’s so much good here built in, from the Little League program to the parents, the facilities that we have…

“This is a great situation to inherit, and the kids have done a great job picking up the stuff that we’ve asked them to pick up. [We need to] just keep improving on those things as we go forward and hopefully, it all ends up where we want it to.”

The Cardinals are scheduled to travel and take on Canton Central Catholic on Saturday before hosting Warren G. Harding on Monday.