Why does my loop iterate the wrong stuff?

I am trying to make a "game" that is kind of a battle ship variant, where u need to sink a submarine in 5 turns. there is a 10x10 coordinate system and you enter your coordinates, and the program tells u that u either hit, missed (and where u should aim afterwards) or typed in wrong coordinates.

Everything by itself works nice, but as soon as I put it all into loops, (so I can reiterate when I enter illegal coordinates and iterate the 5 turns) I get into trouble. The program prints out wrong stuff and I can't understand where I f up. I've really tried to, for like 5 hours... or at least tried different alternatives just to be able to not run into my problem, but it is futile.

here is the code.. I don't know if it is better to just show the loop or all of it. I'll show all for now, hope it is okay.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <ctype.h>

const char* southNorth(int row, int uRow);
const char* eastWest(int col, int uCol);

int main(void)
{
    int col, row;
    char k;

    int uCol = 3;
    int uRow = 8;

    
    printf("The submarine is hiding at the ocean floor.\n");
    printf("You have five depth charges. Try to sing the submarine!\n");
    printf("\n");

    for (int i = 1; i <=5; i++)
    {
        while (1)
        {
            printf("Where to try next (col row)? ");
            scanf("%c %d", &k, &row);

            if ( isupper(k))
            {
                col = k - ('A'-1);
            }
            else if (islower(k))
            {
                col = k - ('a'-1);
            }
            if (col >= 1 && col <= 10 && row >= 1 && row <= 10)
            {
                break;
            }
             printf("Sorry, illegal input!\n");
             printf("\n");
        }
        
        if (southNorth(row, uRow) == NULL && eastWest(col, uCol) == NULL)
        {
            printf("Well done, you sank the submarine in %d tries!\n", i);
            return 0;
        }
        else if (southNorth(row, uRow) == NULL && eastWest(col, uCol) != NULL)
        {
            printf("Miss. Sonar indicates that the submarine is located %s of your current position.\n",  eastWest(col, uCol));
            continue;
        }
        else if (southNorth(row, uRow) != NULL && eastWest(col, uCol) == NULL)
        {
            printf("Miss. Sonar indicates that the submarine is located %s of your current position.\n", southNorth(row, uRow));
            continue;
        }
        else
        {
            printf("Miss. Sonar indicates that the submarine is located %s%s of your current position.\n", southNorth(row, uRow), eastWest(col, uCol));
            continue;
        }
    }
    
    return 0;
}






const char* southNorth(int row, int uRow) 
{
    char *nS;
    if (row < uRow)
    {
        nS = "south";
    }
    else if (row > uRow)
    {
        nS = "north";
    }
    else
    {
        nS = NULL;
    }
    return nS;
}

const char* eastWest(int col, int uCol) 
{
    char *eW;
    if (col < uCol)
    {
        eW = "west";
    }
    else if (col > uCol)
    {
        eW = "east";
    }
    else
    {
        eW = NULL;
    }
    return eW;
}