When Toledo and Adna met for the first time this season in March, the Riverhawks rolled to a dominant victory. In late April, the Pirates returned the favor, run-ruling Toledo.
On Friday, the two teams met for a third time, this time with a spot in the district title game and a bid to the state tournament on the line.
Despite the more recent result, the Riverhawks weren’t ready to roll over.
“We are not going to hang our heads. We’re not going to quit,” Toledo coach Jeff Davis said. “We said ‘Okay, we’re ready. We’re gonna go have a rubber match and we’ll see what happens.’”
The Riverhawks didn’t miss their chance, taking down Adna 11-5 in the 2B District 4 Semifinals to advance to the district championship game for the first time since 2006, the last time they won a district title.
The win also sends Toledo through to the state tournament for the third year in a row and the fifth time in the last six state tournaments.
“We came to the ballpark today expecting to win two,” Davis said, as Toledo beat Forks 24-3 in a quarterfinal earlier in the day. “Not hoping, but expecting. That doesn’t mean you’re going to, but you have a lot better chance when you go in confident and believing in each other … We expected to win, so we did what it took to win.”
After Brenna Carver pitched a 1-2-3 first inning, the Riverhawks immediately jumped out to a 3-0 lead thanks to an RBI double from Kailea Lairson, an RBI groundout from Camryn Hurley, and an RBI double from Peyton Holter.
Adna responded with two runs thanks to a Toledo error in the second, and the two teams both tacked on a run in the following innings.
The 4-3 scoreline held until the fourth, when Carver hit a solo home run, Zaya Norberg hit an RBI double, and Lairson hit a two-run home run to put Toledo up 8-3.
“We hit one through nine,” Davis said. “It doesn’t make any difference who’s coming up for us … We pride ourselves in hitting, and we’re gonna continue to get better because that’s what we wanna do.”
Charlie Myers cleared the wall with a two-run home run of her own to get Adna back within three in the top of the sixth, but RBI singles from Lairson, Hurley, and Audrey Cooper added three insurance runs for the Riverhawks in the bottom half of the frame.
Carver worked around a leadoff single in the seventh to seal the victory. She pitched all seven innings, giving up six hits and five runs (two earned) while striking out four.
Lairson finished with three hits, including the home run and double, and drove in four, while both Xtyn Norberg and Zaya Norberg collected three hits and combined to score five times.
In the quarterfinal win over Forks, Zaya Norberg was a perfect 5 for 5, driving in five runs and scoring five times, and Hurley also drove in five runs while collecting two hits. Ellie Seely had three hits and three RBIs, Cooper drove in three runs, and Carver brought home two.
“In all aspects of the game, we played well today,” Davis said. “Happy for that, and happy for the girls.”
In the other dugout, Adna coach Bruce Pocklington was blunt with his assessment of the Pirates’ play on Friday.
“Both teams (Toledo and Toutle Lake) outplayed us in every aspect of the game,” Pocklington said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do. We didn’t show up today. And we’ve been good at that. We’ve been good at not showing up or really showing up, not much in between.”
In Adna’s quarterfinal, they did both. The Pirates fell behind early to Toutle Lake, and at one point, they trailed 22-11. They rattled off 12 unanswered runs, including eight in the bottom of the seventh to pull off a 23-22 comeback victory.
Between the flurry of runs and the mid-game showers that made the scorebooks hard to read, the Pirates didn’t realize right away that Teagan Baggenstos’ two-run single was the walk-off winner.
It was only after the umpire conferred with the scorebooks that the game was called.
In that game, Baggenstos and Hadleigh Gerard both collected three hits and drove in five runs, Presley Strodmeier added three hits and three RBIs, and both Khloe Hunt and Brytin Dollarhyde hit home runs. Dollarhyde’s dinger was a pinch-hit home run that came during the seventh inning rally.
Pocklington was happy they escaped with a win, saying they were lucky to have not gone 0-2 on the day, but he also was far from pleased with the performance.
“The ugliest game I’ve been involved with,” Pocklington said. “There was no aspect of anything going the way we practiced on any part of our game today. Our base running was atrocious. We didn’t field ground balls. We didn’t play catch. We should have been out of a lot of innings. We weren’t. They’ve got to come back and go to work (Saturday).”
On Saturday, Adna (16-6) will have two chances to reach the state tournament. At 9 a.m., the Pirates will play Rainier. A win would put them in the third-place game, while a loss would put them in the winner-to-state fifth-place game.
“All the little things that add up to big things that we talk about all the time added up today,” Pocklington said. “Our girls gotta show up and play Adna softball. We didn’t do that today.”
Toledo (17-5) will play Napavine for its first district title since 2006, when it won the 1A District 4 Tournament. The Riverhawks lost both meetings against the Tigers in the regular season, but the two losses were by just a combined three runs.
“We’re going to give them everything we got,” Davis said. “We know them, they know us, and it should be a good game.”
