At the bottom of the 10th inning with international tiebreaker rules in place, giving each team a runner starting on 2nd base, catcher Karen Spadafora stepped up to the plate. She had made a few hits in the previous innings, but had not made it to base.

     “I was kind of shaky going up, but I knew I had to get something done,” Spadafora explained. 

     She took a swing and knew she had made a hard hit, but hoped it went through. As she got to first base she looked down the third base baseline and saw teammate Nozomi Akin halfway to home and then the entire team running out from the dugout. 

     Her hit had won the state 6A championship game and ended a long pitching battle between two of Oregon’s best high school pitchers. 

     The girls varsity softball team made it to the championship game after a long tournament run. The game was played against Oregon City at University of Oregon’s Jane Sanders Stadium in Eugene on Tuesday night. 

     Tigard had played Oregon City twice during the regular season, with one loss and one win. 

     Senior Sera Reilly explained the emotion the team had going into the game.

     “I think we definitely felt pressure because we were ranked number 1 in the state pretty much all season, so I think there was a lot of pressure on us,” Reilly said. “But, I think we also put pressure on ourselves to prove that we could do it.”

     The team left school early to make the trip down to Eugene. 

     “The bus ride down was really fun just because we didn’t have a lot of away games this year, and then this away game was kind of the peak and you could tell that all of us really wanted it,” Reilly said. 

     The game began very slow and continued to be slow throughout the game. Not many hits by either team, coming down to a pitchers’ duel. A usual game of 7 innings went into 10 innings. 

     As the extra innings passed, the team felt in control of the game, even as nerves rose.

     Senior pitcher Makenna Reid struck out a championship game record of 21 batters for the night, leaving Oregon City scoreless. Spadafora hit a walk-off single to seal the game for Tigard as Akin slid into home plate. 

     We were the home team so we got to bat last which gave us that last chance to pull through,” Reilly said. “It was honestly like a blackout moment with the adrenaline and definitely felt like an all time high.”

     After the team won the game, they received their 1st place trophy and celebrated with family, friends and peers. 

     “It was all really exciting to me. Just a really fun moment. I didn’t really focus on the fact that it was my last game, I was more focused on how exciting it was that we made it that far,” Reilly said. “I was just proud of my team for making it happen.”