PAULS VALLEY -- The day before, Little Axe softball coach Mike Bread said he expected his squad to come out and compete.
But could he really have expected this? Whatever, Little Axe is headed back to the state softball tournament ... even if it's a new tourney for the Indians.
Participants in each of the last two Class 3A tourneys, the Indians were bumped up to 4A this season and all they had to do was run off three wins out of the losers' bracket Thursday to get where they wanted to go.
After a 2-1 victory over Pauls Valley that eliminated the Panthers and 4-2 and 2-0 victories over Newcastle that eliminated the Racers, the Indians made it.
The Class 4A state softball tournament begins Thursday at Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City.
Nobody came through any bigger than pitcher Devon Frazier, who only threw the send-off shutout at Newcastle after throwing seven innings against Pauls Valley and 11 more in the day's first win over the Racers.
The Indians moved to 28-5 on the season. Every win belongs to Frazier.
Yet it wasn't Frazier who supplied the day's most dramatic moment. That belonged to Lacey Williams, who kept the Indians' season-going with a bottom-of-the-eleventh two-run walk-off home run to end the day's second game.
Williams was only continuing what she began in Game 1, when she knocked in both Little Axe runs, hitting her sixth home run of the season along the way. She knocked in both Indian runs in the nightcap, too.
"It shows how tough they are," Bread said of his players. "We expected them to show up and get this thing done and we did."
What a day.
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Little Axe headed to state
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