South Creek crept one step closer to Walnut Creek on Thursday as the Cougars exploited nine Heide Trask errors to pick up an 8-2 victory in the first game of the East Regional Championship Series.
South Creek (22-3), the No. 3 seed from the Four Rivers Conference, rallied for three runs in the first inning, four in the third and one in the fifth to steal home field advantage from the Titans (20-2), the No. 1 seed from the Tri-County Conference.
“Anytime you can go out and get a win on the road it’s a huge boost,” South Creek coach Patrick Herring. “We knew Trask was a good team. They only had one loss during the season and to be able to pick up a win there was a huge win for us.”
South Creek played the second game of the best of three series on Friday night in Robersonville in a game that ended past the WDN deadline.
Should the Titans even the series the third and final game will be played at Trask today at 2 p.m.
On Thursday, the Cougars jumped on the Trask early as they took advantage of a few Titans’ errors to take a 3-0 lead in the first without getting a hit.
“I think that helped out a lot with our confidence,” Herring said. “I think it helped keep the girls relaxed a little bit and took some of the pressure off of them. When you’re playing a team that has made some errors you have to be able to take advantage of them and we were able to do that.”
South Creek continued to pile up runs in the third with a small ball assault that enabled the Cougars to up their lead to 7-0.
The Cougars were able to get their first two batters of the inning on board before Kim Mobley hit an RBI single to left that plated Brittany Webb.
With runners on the corners, Alexis Craft dropped down a bunt on a suicide squeeze to up the lead to 5-0.
Later in the inning South Creek once again had runners on the corners and went to the well once more as Tori Pelt executed a bunt on a squeeze play that made the score 6-0.
“Whenever you can have small ball going in your favor that’s always important,” Herring said.
The Cougars would record the final run of the inning when the Titans misplayed a ball hit by Caroline James that enabled Pelt to score.
South Creek added its final run of the game in the fifth when Pelt crossed home on a Caroline James sacrifice bunt.
With the lead in hand, South Creek pitcher Lauren Sitterson continued her dominant postseason and struck out eight Titans while issuing two walks and allowed two unearned runs in six innings of work to get the win. Co-ace Taylor Moore entered the game in the seventh and pitched a scoreless inning to wrap up the victory.

South Creek    304    010    0    —    8    6    2
Heide Trask    000    110    0    —    2    5    9
WP: Lauren Sitterson
Hitting: SC — Lauren Sitterson 2-4 (RBI), Tori Pelt 2-4, Kim Mobley 1-4 (2 RBI), Alexis Craft 1-4 (RBI).