LA GRANDE – Entering the final day of the regular season, the Cascade Conference softball championship race remains far from decided.
That's because Southern Oregon lost an all-time heartbreaker – 9-7 in 15 innings, decided by a walk-off home run – to Eastern Oregon in the first game of the teams' series Friday at Peggy Anderson Field. It was the longest game in terms of innings that the Raiders have ever played, so long that Game 2 was suspended due to darkness with the Mountaineers leading 5-3 in the top of the fifth inning.
They'll resume that contest at 10 a.m. Saturday. The third and final CCC counter of the set will follow.
Meanwhile in Caldwell, Oregon Tech won the first two games of its series at College of Idaho, leaving the top of the standings looking like this: SOU at 22-3, OIT at 22-4, and EOU at 21-4.
Here's what that means. The Raiders (42-5 overall) can still clinch a share of the conference title with one win, and they can clinch it outright with one win and an OIT loss. However, if OIT wins its finale at C of I, the Raiders would need to go 2-0 in order to take the outright title and the No. 1 seed for the CCC Tournament. OIT owns the head-to-head tiebreaker over SOU, and EOU has the head-to-head tiebreaker over OIT.
The Mountaineers (27-7 overall) kept their championship hopes alive – they can only win it by completing a sweep – by foiling chance after SOU chance in Game 1.
The Raiders had a 5-0 lead after
Kennedy Kila's solo home run in the fifth inning. Pitching ace
Ayla Davies was rolling until an error kept the Mountaineers' sixth inning alive, and they took advantage with back-to-back home runs – an Emily Barry grand slam and a Madison Olson solo shot that tied the game.
Hailey Seva's RBI single gave the Raiders the lead again in the seventh, but another error with two outs in the bottom of the inning allowed the tying run to score.
Davies didn't surrender an earned run until Madelyn Durham's two-out, game-tying double in the 12th inning. She quieted the Mountaineers again until the 15th, where Olson struck with a two-out, two-run shot to left field.
Davies' heroic 210-pitch effort was matched by EOU's Kylie Parsons, who went 14 innings and won despite allowing 18 hits. She improved to 13-0.
The long ball also has the Mountaineers on top in Game 2. They trailed 3-1 before Hope Burke launched a three-run homer in the fourth.
