Rough start costs Bulldogs in Game 2 loss to Lakeland

SANDPOINT — Sandpoint softball had Lakeland right where they wanted them.

All the Bulldogs needed to do was defend home turf and a state berth was all theirs. Unfortunately, the Hawks were unwilling to comply.

Lakeland gained control early and soared to a 13-4 victory in Game 2 of the 4A Region 1 championship series on Thursday. With the win, the Hawks (12-14) forced a winner-take-all Game 3 with Sandpoint (9-17), which they will host at noon Saturday.

In the second inning, Lakeland built a 5-0 lead over Sandpoint, and in the top of the third that advantage grew to 9-0 on a couple of errors by the Bulldogs.

Head coach Elizabeth Hawkins-Williams said those early mistakes really cost her team.

"Those errors set the tone for most of the game for us," she said. "It was hard to come back and that's been a consistent issue for us this year is mental toughness, so when we started making a few errors, it was basically just a domino effect that took too many innings to get out of."

In the bottom of the third, Lily Gammon got the Bulldogs on the board with an RBI double to make it 9-1. But over the next two innings, the bats got quiet for both teams.

Then in the bottom of the sixth, SHS finally started to chip away at Lakeland's lead. Jacey Cash had an RBI single, Jaidyn Inman scored on a passed ball and Kalila Tuinstra recorded an RBI single to make it 10-4.

That was all the Bulldogs were able to get in the frame, but it felt like they were starting to build some momentum. Then, the Hawks came out in the top of the seventh and scored three runs to wrap things up.

Hawkins-Williams said she saw a lot of resilience from her squad in the final two innings.

"What I liked there at the end was the fight to continue to hit, to continue to put the ball in play and to continue to run the bases hard looking to score, so that part was great to see," she said.

The Hawks used three pitchers during Thursday's game. It's the first time they've used more than two in a game against the Bulldogs this season.

Lakeland head coach Colleen Bevacqua said she decided to switch things up on the mound to give Sandpoint different looks, and it paid off.

"Elizabeth [Hawkins-Williams] does a great job keeping us off balance," she said, "and so I'm not going to lie, I've kind of taken a page out of her book a little bit because she's done that so well for years with Sandpoint and I'm like, 'Well maybe I need to get a little bit braver because I have so many pitchers,' and so I've done that a little bit more and that seemed to work well for us today."

Jaden Dickinson started on the mound for the Bulldogs and lasted 1 2/3 innings before Madi Garman came in and relieved her. Garman made it all the way to the seventh, where she was pulled with one out in the inning.

"I really feel like Madi Garman set a tone for us on the mound," Hawkins-Williams said. "She was able to lead on the mound and really settle the team down and I think that was huge for building that momentum back up."

Gammon finished with three hits in the game.

The winner of Saturday's game at Lakeland will earn a berth to state. The loser will see their season come to a heartbreaking end.

Hawkins-Williams said the Bulldogs need to come out a lot stronger on Saturday and avoid getting down on themselves when they make a mistake because that negativity impacts the entire team. She added that the Bulldogs' lineup for Game 3 could look really different.

"We're going to have to make a lot of changes on Saturday if we want to win because consistency has been a continual issue for us throughout the season," she said, "and so we're going to make some changes defensively because we just can't have players that go out there, make a mistake and are down the rest of the game."

Lakeland 144 000 3 — 13 16 0

Sandpoint 001 003 0 — 4 6 4

H. Gosch, Bursch (3), Wardak (7) and Peyton Sterling; Jaden Dickinson, Madi Garman (2), Via Barlow (7) and Lily Gammon.

HITS: LL — See 3, Smit 3, H. Gosch 3, Sterling 2, Staudinger 2, Walls 2, Wardak. SHS — Gammon 3, Cessna, Cash, Tuinstra. 2B — Smit 2, Walls, Wardak, See, Gammon, Cash, Tuinstra. 3B — Gammon.