South’s ‘Bomb Squad’ lived up to its billing in the Cook Inlet Conference championship game.
Emily McCutcheon, Alexis Keaveny and Ryan Hutchinson each homered and combined for eight RBIs to highlight South’s 11-10 victory over Dimond in the CIC title game at Albrecht Field.
McCutcheon mashed her 13th tater of the season and finished 2-for-4 with three RBIs. Keaveny went 2-for-4 with three RBIs and her 10th dinger. Hutchinson went 3-for-4 with her second homer.
South (21-3) rallied from deficits of 4-0 and 6-5, pulling ahead for good in the sixth inning with a four-run frame.
“The team battled hard and came up big when it was needed,” McCutcheon said. “We responded really well to the pressure of having to come back and win a second game after losing the first game. We had a lot of timely hits and we did a better job of backing up the pitchers. We also kept high energy, which helps a lot too.”
South’s ‘Bomb Squad’ of Alexis Keaveny, Ryan Hutchinson and Emily McCutcheon combined for six home runs Saturday. Photos by SAHS Softball
McCutcheon hit three homers on the day – two in Game 1 and another in Game 2, giving her 28 bombs over the last two seasons. This was the junior slugger’s fifth career two-homer high school game, with three of them coming against Dimond.
“I haven’t been seeing a lot of good pitches this year and have had a lot of walks,” said McCutcheon, who is batting .672 on 41-of-61 hitting. “I’ve learned to be really patient and look for something that I can work with. So, I just try to look for a mistake or something left over the plate.”
Emily McCutcheon
With 34 home runs in 24 games as a team, South has earned the ‘Bomb Squad’ nickname for good reason. Seven different players have gone yard, with McCutcheon and Keaveny providing the most pop.
“Keaveny potentially has the most power, more of her home runs are line drives over the fence,” said South coach Joe White. “McCutcheon, though, is most consistent with her power and is slugging at 1.578.”
A home run is the ultimate way to fire up a team, much like a dunk in basketball. Dingers also deflate opponents.
“The biggest benefit of a home run is that it puts pressure on the other team and demoralizes them,” White said.
Alexis Keaveny
Just because McCutcheon hits bombs doesn’t mean she swings for the fences. She spends a lot of time working on her swing and that diligence pays off in the box as she squares up a lot of pitches.
“I just try to hit the ball hard, no matter where it goes,” she said. “I’m happy with a single double or walk, whatever helps the team.”
South freshman pitcher Milly Wurst closed out the win with four innings of relief to improve her record to 11-2. She started the game at third base, went 2-for-4 at the plate and didn’t allow an earned run in the circle.
Dimond (21-10) had seven different players get base knocks and Arianna Alirez homered and drove in two runs.
The one-run outcome was indicative of how close this series has been recently as Dimond and South have split their last four head-to-head meetings, with each team scoring 32 runs.
“I think we can all agree this series has definitely been intense,” said Dimond’s Malia Ogee.
It wasn’t necessarily that way at the beginning of the season when South beat Dimond in two games by a combined score of 18-1.
But that was then. Now Dimond is the only team to beat South twice this season.
Trinity Miller
“They’ve been slowly getting better as the season goes on,” McCutcheon. “They have a really strong team and they’ve been showing it more.”
Earlier in the day, the Lynx beat South 11-8 in extra innings to force the if-necessary game. Dimond ended the back-and-forth affair with a three-spot in the eighth inning.
Trinity Miller threw a 151-pitch complete game, striking out 11 and walking just two.
Alirez again came up big for Dimond with a 3-for-5 performance while Chloe Severson and Aubree Ogee each had two hits and three RBIs. Ogee, a freshman and the younger sister of Malia, hit a home run in one of the biggest games of her life.
“As her older sister I was super proud of her to be able to clutch up in that moment,” Malia said.
Now, the Ogee sisters will focus on the ASAA state tournament this week in Fairbanks, where they hope to lead the Lynx to the school’s first state title in softball.
For Aubree, it’ll be her first taste of the prep postseason. For Malia, it’s her last chance to leave the field a state champion before heading off to play college softball at NCAA Division II Black Hills State.
“It’s a mixture of emotions that this coming weekend is my last weekend that I get to wear my jersey as a Lynx and play with some of these girls for the last time,” she said. “But I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’m super pumped for state and looking forward to going out and leaving everything out on the field with these girls and compete and win a state title for Dimond.”
Dimond’s Malia Ogee