Iowa state softball: Class 5A Valley, Ankeny, Pleasant Valley and Urbandale advance

FORT DODGE — Composure.

That’s the best way to describe what pushed No. 1 Valley past No. 8 Prairie in the Class 5A softball state tournament quarterfinal on Monday. The Tigers did send the Hawks packing, 11-1, in five innings, after all.

But the final score doesn’t show the full picture.

This game started evenly matched, and it was Prairie that picked up the first run of the game in the opening inning. Valley responded with a run of its own in the second, with Anna Eastin sending Mackenzie Mohler – remember that name – home to tie it up.

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After that, there was no clipping the Tigers’ claws.

Claire Long’s sacrifice fly gave Valley a one-run lead. Mohler hit a double that scored Kari Rose. With the bases loaded a few batters later, Alexa Stevermer walked, which sent Mohler around to score. The Tigers climbed to a 4-1 lead by the end of the third.

The Tigers piled on five more runs in the fourth inning, led by a three-run home run from Mohler.

“Mackenzie had two doubles, then a homerun, then a lineout, so she made solid contact all day,” Valley coach Tom Bakey said postgame. “What that does is, it’s demoralizing for the other team when you put up a big number off the home run.”

Two more runs in the fifth gave Valley the required 10-run lead to end the game early, and the Tigers’ dugout surrounded Isla Hervey after her base hit secured the first spot in the semifinals.

So, what doesn’t the final score show?

Valley scored nine of its 11 runs with two outs on the board. Nothing says composure quite like winning a state tournament game, in five innings, while the majority of the runs were scored with two outs hanging over the team's head.

“I didn’t know that, wow, that’s amazing,” Bakey expressed. “We hit strikes, we try not to chase, we make pitchers throw strikes and we put good swings on it.

“Whenever you do that and you don’t expand, and you have confidence in the strike zone and your abilities, those types of things can happen and that’s what happened today.”

The top-seeded Tigers advance to the 5A semifinals, where they will face No. 5 Ankeny on Wednesday at 10 a.m.

Ankeny 2, Waukee Northwest 0

It was slow going on the field opposite Valley’s 10-run rout, as No. 5 Ankeny and No. 4 Waukee Northwest went head-to-head for the second spot in the semifinals.

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The pitchers controlled the opening innings, with a showdown between Hawkettes senior and Creighton softball commit Abby Rusher and Northwest’s elite eighth grader Sophia Schlader.

Rusher was strong at bat, too. She drilled a leadoff double that came just shy of being a home run, and then Rusher’s courtesy runner – Josie Parton – stole third on the very next pitch. Freshman Autumn Leinen sent an infield single to the right side to bring Parton home in the top of the fifth inning to break a scoreless tie.

Leinen advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt before being replaced by Brylee Bach, who advanced to third on another sacrifice bunt. A wild pitch scored Bach in the middle of the fifth, and that proved enough to send Ankeny to the semifinal.

Schlader did strike out seven, but she allowed two runs. Rusher allowed two hits for no runs with no errors and struck out four.

Pleasant Valley 8, Waukee 7 (8 innings)

This wasn’t the type of game where the winner was obvious in the first few innings.

No. 7 Waukee started off aggressively, scoring a run in the opening inning – a single from Mara Yokiel that sent Ella McGee home. That narrow lead held through two innings, and then the Warriors extended it in the third. Yokiel again scored McGee, followed by a base hit by Marin Jacobsen which sent Zana Zeleke home and gave Waukee a 3-0 lead.

The Warriors held a 5-0 lead by the end of the fourth, and their opponent remained scoreless through five innings.

Things changed in the sixth inning when Spartans’ senior Jessie Clemons sent a three-run homer over the center field fence to move her team within two.

And it didn’t take long for No. 2 Pleasant Valley to even the score, adding two more runs to the scoreboard and sending the game into extra innings.

Waukee led off in the eighth and took back the lead, picking up a couple runs for a 7-5 advantage. But the Spartans weren’t ready to go home.

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Clemons managed to score on a base hit by Mary Paige Withers to make it 7-6. Sarah Rigdon followed with a sacrifice fly and Ella Rubel scored to tie the game. Then it was up to Addison Ohda, who picked up a hit and scored Withers to win the quarterfinal matchup, 8-7.

The Spartans will play Urbandale on Wednesday at 12:15 p.m.

Urbandale 10, Muscatine 9

Back-and-forth scoring is the simplest way to describe what happened in Monday’s matchup between No. 6 Urbandale and No. 3 Muscatine.

The J-Hawks were up 2-0 after the top of the second inning, but Muscatine stole back the lead – and went up 5-2 – in the bottom half of the frame. Urbandale scored two more runs in the third and inched closer to Muscatine’s lead before the Muskies scored one more run in the bottom of the third.

Urbandale tied things up, 6-6, in the fourth and ran away with the game from then on. The J-Hawks scored four in the fifth for a 10-6 advantage. Even with Muscatine scoring three more runs before the end of the game, the J-Hawks' 10 were enough for the win.

The 10-9 decision was the highest-scoring Class 5A game in tournament history, according to the game’s announcers.

Alyssa Hertel is the college sports recruiting reporter for the Des Moines Register. Contact Alyssa at ahertel@dmreg.com or on Twitter @AlyssaHertel .

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa state softball: Class 5A Valley, Ankeny, Pleasant Valley and Urbandale advance