By Nicholas Huenefeld

Special to the Sentinel-Tribune

ROSSFORD — A pair of local players helped lead the Owens Community College softball team to a doubleheader split with Delta College on Saturday in the opening day of a best of three series to crown a Region XII champion at the Rossford Athletics Complex.

With Saturday’s result, the two teams will face each other at 12 p.m. on Sunday in a winner-take-all contest for the National Junior College Athletic Association Region XII championship.

“We came out fighting,” Owens interim coach Alexis Orner said. “The team came to win. They didn’t care who was here, who wasn’t. They were hungry and did it the first game, but just came up a little short in the second.”

The Express captured the opening game, 10-0, in five innings behind a complete game shutout in the circle from Rossford graduate Lola Luderman, who picked up her third win of the season after allowing just two hits and zero walks with nine strikeouts.

“Lola’s excitement and her teammates picking her up with the bats and on defense (was huge),” Orner said.

The former Bulldog also delivered a three-run blast in the third inning that gave her team a 7-0 lead.

Elmwood graduate Kynzie Science, who played first base on Saturday, also picked up her first home run, a two-run shot in the first inning. She scored a run in another at bat and finished 1-for-3.

“They’ve each had phenomenal seasons,” Orner said of Luderman and Science. “They’ve both had their rough patches between injuries and slumps but once it came to this tournament run, they have awoken and came to play.”

Allison Rhodes had a team-best two hits out of the cleanup spot for Owens.

The visiting Pioneers (11-25), who served as the home team on the scoreboard in the second game, finished off a 12-11 victory to even the series with a walk-off, two-run double into left center in the seventh inning.

The back-and-forth game, in which Owens held 7-4 and 10-8 leads, saw Brianna Williams hit a go-ahead RBI double into left center to give the Express an 11-10 lead in the top of the seventh.

With one out in the bottom half, though, the Pioneers got a double, a walk and another double to pick up the win against Luderman, who took the loss in relief.

Haley Entenmann went the first three innings in the circle for Owens, while Reagan Mitchell also saw action in middle relief.

The top five batters in the Express lineup devastated Delta pitching as they each picked up at least two hits while finishing a combined 13-for-24 with nine runs and nine RBIs.

“They really came through when we needed clutch hits,” Orner said of that group. “It didn’t matter what the situation was. They just knew they had to put the ball in play somewhere hard, and that’s what they did.”

Rhodes continued her hot bat from the first game by finishing 4-for-4 with two runs and five RBIs, while the seventh-inning hero, Williams, went 3-for-5 with a pair knocked in.

On Sunday, Owens (7-20) will be looking to avenge a loss to Delta in last year’s Region XII title series. This is actually the fourth-straight season the two programs have met for the championship with the Pioneers winning two of those.

Sunday’s winner advances to the NJCAA’s Appalachian District Championship May 10-11 against Patrick & Henry Community College, who won Region X.