The Barton Community College Softball team needed late heroics Friday afternoon at Dodge City's Legend Park in rallying from a two-run deficit to advance into the second round of the Region VI Tournament behind a bottom of the eighth inning Jayden Solberg walk-off home run for a 5-3 victory over Seward County Community College.
The 4th seeded Cougars (31-15) will next meet Independence Community College in Saturday's 11:00am match-up as the 8th seeded Pirates (14-22) upset top seeded Colby Community College 5-4. Fifth seeded Seward County (18-29) falls to the loser's bracket to face the Trojans of Colby (29-18) in Saturday's 9:00 a.m. contest.
The lone runs for Seward County came in the second frame as a leadoff walk was joined by a 2-out walk to extend the inning with Alyssah Pontoja's lone hit going big fly varieity putting the Saints up 3-0.
Jade Phillips connected on her second of three doubles in the game to extend the Cougars' third inning with Hailey Pop following with a deep two-bag hit to left center to cut the deficit to 3-1.
The Cougars still trailed by the same margin going into their final two outs but Jaelyn Carter's single and Phillips' third double gave Barton new life with the tying run at second. However following a pop-up and Brooke McCollough facing a 1-2 pitch, the freshman sent a single to center with the the speedy Phillips motoring around the bases for the tying run as McCollough slid into second on an outfield error.
Betsy Parmley nearly provided the walk-off heroics with a good drive off a 1-2 pitch bt the liner was chased down in the gap sending the game to extras.
Emma Horsch, who came in to relieve Tia Kohl in the top of the 6th, worked out a leadoff walk in the eighth to turn it back to the offense.
Demi Kunkel became the winning run in drawing a one-out walk with Solberg following in driving an 0-2 pitch over the left field fence to walk-off the victory sending the Cougars into the winner's bracket next round.
Horsch improved to 9-5 on the year in surrendering no hits while Kohl worked the first six frames of just two hits while striking out seven.
Phillips led the Cougars' nine hits with a 3-for-4 effort out of the two-hole as Barton collected six extra base hits.