When Juneau’s two softball teams met Friday, the stakes were high.
Both Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé and Thunder Mountain High School teams lost their first games at the Region V softball tournament and met in the losers’ bracket Friday. The winner would stay alive. The loser would go home.
Unfortunately for the Crimson Bears, the Falcon bats showed up in a big way, and Thunder Mountain defeated JDHS 9-1 in five innings Friday.
Falcons leadoff batter Maryah Tuvaifale collected three hits for the victors including a double and a triple, and scored twice. Sydney Strong collected three RBIs for the Falcons.
JDHS got to Falcons starting pitcher Kyra Jenkins in the top of the first inning, as Nikki Lahnum worked a walk and came around to score on a Sophia Schauwecker single. Jenkins bore down after that, allowing just one more baserunner in her three innings of work.
[JDHS baseball advances to regional finals in dramatic fashion]
The Crimson Bears’ 1-0 lead was short-lived, as the Falcons scored four runs in the bottom half of the inning. They added three more in the third and one run in each the fourth and the fifth innings. The final run in the fifth ended the game as a result of the mercy rule, as that extended THMS’ lead to eight runs.
Thunder Mountain advances to the tournament semifinals at noon Saturday, set to play the loser of the Sitka-Ketchikan game on Friday night. If Thunder Mountain can win that noon game, the team will advance to the finals to play the winner of that Friday night Sitka-Ketchikan game.
The team that comes out of the losers’ bracket has to beat the team from the winners’ bracket twice to capture the Region V crown, while the team from the winners’ bracket has to win just once in the finals. The championship game is set for 3 p.m. Saturday.
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at amccarthy@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @akmccarthy.
