Kansas City, Kan. ? Perfection is hard to maintain. Even for the No. 1 high school baseball team in the state.

Free State High learned that first-hand on a rainy, miserable Friday evening at CommunityAmerica Ballpark. The top team in Class 6A had its unblemished start to the season come to a sloppy end in a 13-4 loss against Kansas City (Mo.) Rockhurst in the River City Baseball Festival.

“Rockhurst is a good team,” Free State coach Mike Hill said. “And when you play good clubs, your margin for error is slim. We just didn’t do the things that we needed to tonight.”

The Firebirds (7-1) scored early on Hunter Scheib’s single to right field, and then began to see things unravel. With the score tied at 1 in the top of the third, starting pitcher Cody Lown appeared on his way to getting out of a two-out, two-on jam when third baseman John Wilson scooped up a ground ball hit his way. But Wilson threw the ball wide of first, allowing two runners to score.

Two batters and two hits later, the Firebirds trailed, 5-1, and their impeccable early-season mark was on its way out the door.

“Errors really hurt us,” Scheib said. “They sometimes come back to bite you, and it did in our case.”

Lown encountered a similar situation an inning later when a two-out error in right field plated two runners. In total, six consecutive unearned runs scored with Lown on the mound, who struggled through 5 2/3 innings and allowed 12 hits.

Afterward, Lown refused to fault his defense for giving up outs.

“I left the balls out there,” he said. “They were able to capitalize every time I left it up. I can’t leave it up there very often, and I did a couple of times.

The Hawklets finally knocked Lown from the game in the sixth on John Calhoun’s two-run single to left, which put Rockhurst (10-5) ahead, 9-3.

On the other side of the mound, Hawklets pitcher Jake Doller tossed a complete game and struck out five. His only rough patch came in the third, when he allowed runs on Scheib’s single and E.J. Swanson’s groundout to second base. When Doller finally appeared to be running out of steam in the final inning, he had a 10-run lead and escaped a bases-loaded jam with minimal damage.

Scheib led the Firebirds with three hits. Jordan Dreiling added two and scored two of his team’s four runs.

Free State will take on Springfield Hillcrest at Hoglund Ballpark at 11:30 a.m today on the final day of the River City Baseball Festival.

Hill gathered his team on the first-base concourse through the spiraling rain after his team’s first loss of the season.

“The message was, ‘Don’t let one mistake lead to two,'” Hill said. “How we handle a little bit of failure is important. If we come back (today) with the right approach, I’m confident we’ll do well.”