High school softball: Top two seeds, Altamont and Milford, to meet in 1A championship game
· Yahoo Sports
Three weeks to the day after sitting in the stands as spectators during a BYU softball game at Gail Miller Field, Altamont’s softball team will have the unique opportunity to play on that exact same field Saturday.
The No. 2 seed Longhorns jumped all over top seed Milford in their 1A semifinal game on Friday afternoon, rolling to a 13-3 win to advance to the championship at 11 a.m. Saturday.
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Altamont will face that same Milford team in the title game, as the Tigers rallied to beat Wayne in the one-loss bracket to book their place in the final.
This is the first year 1A teams are competing in their own state tournament instead of trying to compete with 2A schools twice their size.
Occasionally a 1A team in the past could crack the top six in 2A, but a deep playoff run was never realistic. Knowing the landscape was different this year, Altamont coach Bailee Trapp could sense a different energy in her team at tryouts and in the preseason.
“They’re super excited. I think it gave them a little more confidence and fight going into it, and I think since the beginning of the season they knew like this was their end goal,” Trapp said.
“They set that right after we had tryouts, they knew what they were going for.”
A legitimate championship end goal has changed everything.
In an effort to add to that excitement, Trapp took her team to a BYU home game against Iowa State three weeks ago. Trapp, who played college softball at Utah State, made arrangements with BYU after the game to have her team go on the field afterward for a home run derby.
Now the Longhorns get to play on the field with a championship on the line.
Milford and Altamont split their region series this season, which added to the intrigue of Friday’s semifinal at Spanish Fork Sports Complex.
The game was never that competitive though. Altamont scored four runs in the first inning and sixth in the second, building a quick 10-0 lead and coasting the rest of the way.
“We knew we were going to be visitors and so we knew it was going to be really important just to jump on them and score runs and make a statement and they stuck to their game plan,” said Trapp, who’s in her second year as head coach at Altamont.
Hadley Mecham did much of the damage at the plate, going 4 for 5 with two doubles and two RBIs to lead the Longhorns, with Reaylee Stevenson also driving in two runs.
Hazlie Bagley dominated in the circle for Altamont, striking out 12 in the win while only allowing one hit.
“Hazlie pitched awesome. She was attacking batters. She didn’t really throw a ton of balls, which put pressure on them,” said Trapp.
For Milford, the disappointment of that loss seemed to carry over to its 1A elimination game against Wayne an hour later as it fell behind 7-2 after four and a half innings.
Heading into the bottom of the seventh it still trailed 9-6 but rallied for the gritty 10-9 win as Reese Wunderlich tied the game at 9-9 on a bases-clearing triple and then scored the winning run two batters later.
Milford will need to beat Altamont twice on Saturday to win the championship, but it’s excited about the prospects after the dramatic Friday night win.