Northgate defeats McIntosh twice for region title

Thu, 10/11/2007 - 10:08pm
By: Kevin Wandra

The Northgate Lady Vikings are the queens of Region 2-AAAA.

Northgate defeated the McIntosh Lady Chiefs twice Thursday, 5-1 and 2-1, to win the Region 2-AAAA championship at McCurry Park in Fayetteville.

The top-seeded Lady Vikings avenged a 1-0 loss Tuesday to No. 2 seed McIntosh, its only region loss this season, in a semifinal game of the region tournament.

Northgate had to beat McIntosh twice because the Lady Chiefs had not lost a game entering the finals.

Northgate’s Kelsey Floyd and Paige Martin combined to pitch a one-hitter in the second, championship-clinching game.

Jessica Conaway’s first-inning single up the middle off Floyd was the only hit Northgate allowed.

Erin Justice’s RBI groundout in the sixth accounted for McIntosh’s lone run.

McIntosh threatened in the bottom of the seventh, with runners on first and second and two outs, but Martin induced Amber Shaw to hit a grounder to first baseman Floyd, who threw to second to nail Nicole Fox, who strayed too far from the bag.

McIntosh jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the opening game on Conaway’s RBI single to right field in the first inning. But Northgate went on to score a run in the sixth, and the game eventually went into extra innings.

With the international tiebreaker rule, which allows each team to start extra innings with a runner on second, in effect, Northgate widened its lead in the eighth, scoring two runs each on Floyd’s double down the third base line and Brandi Jablonski’s single just inside the left field line.

Floyd pitched a scoreless eighth to seal the victory.

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