Yesterday afternoon, two competitions passed off in two totally different age teams, two totally different sports activities, on two differently-shaped fields.
And with one objective: a spot within the championship last.
In Oklahoma Metropolis, Okla. yesterday afternoon, the three-time NCAA champion of Division I softball, the College of Oklahoma, was seeking to ebook its place within the best-of-three last of the Girls’s School World Sequence.
And in Fairfield, Conn. a number of hours later, the defending CIAC women’ lacrosse champions, the Darien (Conn.) Blue Wave, was seeking to make it to Saturday’s last of the Class LL championship.
Every of those groups performed taut, tense video games in opposition to their opponents — the College of Florida within the softball sport, and Greenwich (Conn.) within the lacrosse sport.
And in each video games, the successful crew got here up with a supreme effort, doing what they did finest, to win.
For the Oklahoma Sooners, they acquired a well timed dwelling run within the eighth inning off the bat of Jayda Coleman to win the elimination sport 6-5. It was an opposite-field shot from the senior, and meaning OU will tackle Texas within the finals starting later in the present day.
For Darien’s half, they had been down 6-5 to Greenwich within the fourth quarter earlier than doing what they do finest: successful attracts and executing within the assault finish. Sadie Stafford can be the beneficiary of Darien’s midfield successful the opening draw of the ultimate interval, and scoring to degree the sport at 6-6. The Wave would win the subsequent draw and Anna Von Kennel would break up three red-clad Greenwich defenders to attain the game-winning objective in a 7-6 victory to ship them to the Class LL last.
In each video games, the successful groups didn’t win on expertise alone, to borrow a phrase from Herb Brooks. No, these two groups discovered one thing deeper in key factors of the sport to attain yet another level than the opposition.
And the wonderful factor is that neither sport was for a championship; these had been video games simply to get to a championship. I’ll have an interest to see what occurs to each of those groups the subsequent video games they play.