POLAND — Weather and preseason scheduling limits prevent Maine high school baseball teams from doing much fine-tuning before the games start to count.

With that in mind, teams know it’s pointless to be picky about how they win early in the season. They all look the same in the left-hand column of the standings when the season is over.

Poland got one of those wins only a mother could love Monday in the Western Maine Conference season-opener with rival Gray-New Gloucester. And the Knights were glad to have it after squandering a 5-0 lead, then rallying from a three-run deficit for a walkoff 9-8 victory.

“Some days you’ve got to grind it out,” Poland coach Mike Connor said. “Today was one of those days. We’ll take it.”

A game with 17 walks and eight errors met a fitting conclusion after three-plus hours on a bright, breezy day.

In the bottom of the seventh, Lucas Wilson drew a one-out walk, stole second and scored when the shortstop made a throwing error on Tanner Marston’s two-out grounder. Marston ended up at second.

Pat Jipson followed with a slow roller to third. The third baseman bare-handed it and made an off-balance throw in the dirt, past first base with pinch-runner Matt Rabasco already making the turn at third to score the winning run.

“I was nervous, but we always have a chance. You never know if they’re going to make an error,” said Jipson, who walked three times and scored twice in the leadoff spot.

“We’ve got a young ball club, and they make young ball club mistakes,” Gray-New Gloucester coach Brad Smith said. “I thought the strength of our team was our infield defense, and unfortunately we didn’t show it today. We’ve got three sophomores (in the infield) and sometimes it’s very easy to have senior expecations. But they’ll come back. They’re a determined bunch.”

Jipson set the tone for the game in the first inning by coming back from down in the count 0-2 to work a leadoff walk against Gray-NG ace Kyle Nielsen.

That sparked a three-run frame in which the Knights didn’t get a hit and hit only one ball out of the infield.

“I normally walk a lot. That’s probably one of my strong points,” Jipson said. “I was hoping guys would be a little wild. It’s the first game of the season and not all of their arms are ready yet.”

Poland starter Lucas Johnson looked to be in mid-season form early. He struck out the side in the first and faced the minimum through the first three innings thanks to a runner caught stealing and a rare 9-to-3 putout.

While his teammates were inflating the lead to 5-0, Johnson escaped a two-on, none-out jam in the fourth.

Fatigue got to him in the Patriots’ eight-run fifth, though, as he worked past the 70-pitch mark. An error and three straight walks got the Patriots on the board. After a force out made it 5-2, Justin McKenna tied the game with a double to center field.

“That was one thousand percent my bad,” Connor said. “He was cruising and I ignored the pitch count,and that’s not what I want to do in April.”

Nielsen put the Patriots ahead with a bases-loaded walk against reliever Kaleb Bridgham. Evan Harmer followed with a two-run single that made it 8-5.

The Knights chipped away against reliever Brendan McNally. Jake Simard’s RBI double pulled them within 8-7 in the sixth inning.

“We have the talent. We can swing it when we’re right. We can pitch when we’re right. We can play defense when we’re right,” Connor said. “It’s from the neck up that I’m worried about. They showed something today. Even though they lost the lead, they refocused and just chipped away.”