A team has never lost until they have given up. In the state playoffs, Puma softball never gave up.

“This is the farthest we’ve ever made it and each year we’ve gotten closer and closer to the championship so it’s been really great to see the team improve” said junior pitcher Saige Stutz.

This season, the team made it to the semifinals against Pinnacle after a double elimination game also against Pinnacle. Initially they made it to the third round of the bracket but lost, kicking them to the loser bracket. Not giving up, the Pumas continued to fight their best game to dig themselves out of rock bottom.

The second elimination round against Pinnacle was the most vital game to win in order to have any chance at winning state. In the end this game was a blowout 5-1 and “the kids bought into what we were trying to do and did a good job of executing it” said coach Rob Hehe.

Senior Piper Lujan hit her 14th home run of the season in this game. She said, “the homerun felt amazing!  But when it came off my bat, the whole time I was thinking ‘oh my gosh that’s really high.’”

Junior Kylee Hough also hit a homerun during the game and a hit that brought in two runners. “It was really good to get the team up…it was a tie when I hit that, and I think that set the tone for the rest of the game. It got everyone pumped and got their energy up,” Hough said.

Getting in two runners changed the face of the game. In the beginning, the team was struggling to get their heads in the game.

Stutz said, “it was really scary in the beginning because there were some errors, and I made an error too, so I was a little bit nervous about that because normally when we make errors and give up outs they’ll take advantage of it and score runs. But we were able to shut them out and keep them from scoring and then I just had confidence in my team that we could do it.”

And they did. Our Pumas beat Pinnacle instead of going home. But next was the semifinals, now the third time playing against Pinnacle. Unfortunately the team lost in the semis, but were happy with how far they achieved.
Hehe said, “it came down to pure energy. We offensively didn’t come out and do much, [but] the kids worked their rear-ends off to get where they were and they did a good job.”