Spectators have grown to expect wide-margin wins from this year’s Thunder Mountain High School softball team. And that’s just what the Falcons delivered in the opening game of the Region V softball tournament at Dudley Field in Ketchikan.
TMHS won 7-2, leading Ketchikan since the bottom of the second inning. Junior pitcher Kyra Jenkins Hayes commanded play from both the mound and the plate, pitching a complete game with six strikeouts while notching a game-high three RBI, earning two of them on a third-inning home run.
Jhaelah Schultz and Kiara Hodges tallied Kayhi’s pair of RBI.
The Kings struck first in the top of the first inning. Jenkins Hayes gave up a single to Kayhi’s Breanna Gentry and walked Grace Clarke, allowing Schultz to open scoring on a hard ground ball double to right field, bringing Gentry home.
The Falcons responded in the bottom of the second when Peyton Harp doubled on a line drive to right field. Penina Fenumiai scored on the play. Megan Dallas then brought Harp home on a fly ball double to center field, giving the Falcons their first lead, 2-1.
Jenkins Hayes opened that lead up with her two-run shot out of the park in the bottom of the third, which scored Simpson College recruit Maxie Saceda-Hurt, 4-1. After a scoreless fourth, Hodges tripled to right field in the top of the fifth to cut the deficit to 4-2.
Mariah Tanuvasa Tuvaifale cut short the Kings’ glimmer of hope when she smacked a solo homer to left field as the first batter in the bottom of the fifth. Jenkins Hayes’ subsequent triple scored Morgan Poole to make it 6-2, before Jenkins Hayes scored the seventh and final run for the Falcons after tagging up on a Peyton Harp pop fly.
The Falcons will face the winner of JDHS and Sitka in a Friday, 2 p.m. game. The winner of that game will go on to the Region V championship on Saturday, to face whichever team emerges from a pair of losers bracket games on Friday.
Juneau-Douglas 5, Sitka 6
Sitka High School overcame a four-run deficit to edge out Juneau-Douglas High School in the first round of the Region V tournament Thursday in Ketchikan.
The loss bounces the Crimson Bears to a losers bracket game against Ketchikan High School Friday at 11 a.m. They’ll have to claw their way back to the region championship game with consecutive wins Friday.
Sitka advanced to a 2 p.m. Friday game against Thunder Mountain. The winner of Sitka-TMHS will punch their ticket to the Region V final Saturday at 11 a.m.
Sitka took a 6-4 lead in the fifth after loading the bases in the fifth with just one out. A ground ball single to shortstop Morgan Balovich scored Kyleigh McArthur while a ground out scored Nyla Duncan. Spargo retired Emily Young on three straight strikes to stanch the bleeding, but JDHS would head into the final two innings down 6-4.
In the top of the sixth, Elisa Fabrello drove Balovich home on a line drive single to right field, 6-5, to close scoring.
• Contact reporter Kevin Gullufsen at 523-2228 or kgullufsen@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @KevinGullufsen.
