4A high school softball playoffs: Tooele advances in winner's bracket

TAYLORSVILLE — The Tooele Buffaloes stayed in the winners' bracket of the 4A softball tournament with a tough 3-2 victory over Bountiful.

Calls at home were the name of the game as two outs at home plate were key in the victory. With Tooele up 2-1 in the bottom of the fourth and two outs, Allie Alverson smashed a home run over the fence, but instead of touching home when she reached the base, however, the officials said she stepped over the base and was assisted by an assistant coach in touching the bag. Alverson was given credit for a triple and called out, leaving the Buffaloes with two runs instead of three.

They scored again in the fifth inning on a walk, a single by Kelsey Mendenhall, another walk and a sacrifice fly RBI by Marissa Mendenhall to make the score heading into the bottom of the seventh 3-1 in favor of Tooele.

Then the other call at the plate came into play as Bountiful players reached base on an error and two singles by Allison Hock and Heather Stucki, who picked up an RBI and made the score 3-2.

Hock then attempted to score on a wild pitch but was called out on the throw home. A strike out then ended the game in favor of the Buffaloes.

"You can't leave a game in the umpires' hands. You have to go out there and play the game and beat them yourselves," said Tooele coach Barry Pitt, who was happy his team's home run that was called back didn't count in the end.

"This is where we want to be to prevent playing a lot of ball games," said Pitt about his team's tough play to stay in the winners' bracket. And he was happy with his team's play to keep themselves where they wanted to be.

"The whole team played intense, and nobody let up. Every player had a chance and made a good play, defensively, offensively, on the bases," he added.

Both pitchers played tough, only allowing nine total hits, including one for extra bases, and both defenses were solid with the Braves not giving up anything on errors and Tooele only finishing with two.

Matti Snow reached base three times on a single and a pair of walks, but for the most part, neither team was able to make much noise offensively.

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E-mail: jolsen@desnews.com

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