Basic, Shadow Ridge lose in state softball tournament
RENO — The bats came around for Basic, but it was too late.
The Wolves dug too big of a hole, and even four singles to lead off the seventh inning weren’t enough. Basic fell 8-5 to Douglas on Thursday in the first round of the Class 4A state softball tournament at Bishop Manogue High School.
“All in all, it wasn’t a bad game,” Basic coach Lauren Taylor said. “We weren’t littered with errors, we just didn’t hit the way that we needed to hit in order to make things happen. The seventh inning is a rotten time to all of the sudden wake the bats up.”
The bugaboo for the Wolves (26-12) was the long ball. Precisely, three of them, at seemingly the most inopportune of times. After the first two batters struck out to start the game, Douglas (23-11-1) put a runner on first, then Chloie Pratt poked one over the short right-field porch for a 2-0 lead.
Basic took a brief lead in the bottom of the third, but served up a home run to Alyssa Smokey, who singled in the fifth to extend the lead to 4-3. In the seventh, Jasmine McNinch led off the Douglas half of the inning with a single, and Haley Doughty then homered for a 6-3 lead.
“We knew we had to do something,” Basic senior Hannah Barr said. “I knew that I had to amp my team up, I knew that somebody had to get a hit and we coudn’t start out with one out.”
Barr started the inning with a single. Sanoe Helenihi, Angela Santillanes and Mikayla Berg followed, and suddenly Basic had the tying run at the plate with the bases loaded and nobody out.
Alyssa Ferguson reached on a fielder’s choice, retiring Santillanes at third. Then a screamer off Shelby Basso’s bat landed in the mitt of Douglas first baseman Kettja Bennett, who stepped on first to double off Ferguson and end the game.
Spanish Springs 7, Shadow Ridge 6 — The Mustangs took a 6-3 lead into the bottom of the seventh, but allowed three runs to score before Rylee Retzer hit a walk-off homer for the Cougars.
“We like to do it the hard way for some reason, we’ve always done it the hard way,” Shadow Ridge coach Julia Meyn said.
Shadow Ridge (27-11) jumped to a 1-0 lead in the first, then Shea Clements doubled in two in the second to make the score 3-0. Alyssa Stanley made it 4-0 with a homer in the third.
Spanish Springs (31-3) answered with three runs in the fourth, but the Mustangs got them right back with back-to-back homers by Stanley and Jasmine Martin in the fifth.
Shadow Ridge and Basic will play in an elimination game at noon Friday.
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Contact Justin Emerson at jeme