Spooner girls playing well as Regionals near

SPOONER — WIAA Regionals are getting close for area teams, and the Spooner Rails are one of the teams playing very good softball at the right time of the season.

Coach Brian Amys and the Spooner girls are currently 12-5 and in 3rd place in the competitive Heart O’ North Conference. Overall, Spooner is 14-6.

On May 9, the Spooner girls hosted then-undefeated Hayward, giving the Hurricanes all they could handle and more. Spooner took Hayward into extra innings, before finally falling 7-3.

The Rail dugout was rocking as the fired-up Spooner girls played their hearts out. Hayward jumped out to a quick 1-0 lead in the top of the first inning, but the Rails answered in the bottom of the inning to tie the game 1-1.

Following a scoreless second inning, the Spooner defense again kept Hayward off the scoreboard in the top of the third. In the bottom of the inning, the Rails put together some nice offense, scoring a pair of runs and grabbing a 3-1 lead.

The Hurricanes scored a run in the top of the fourth, making it 3-2. They then tied the game 3-3 with another single run in the top of the fifth. Meanwhile, the Spooner bats went quiet as the offense failed to score any more runs. The defense, though, managed to shut down Hayward for the rest of regulation play.

With the game still tied at the end of 7 innings, the contest went into the eighth. Hayward pushed 4 runs across home plate to make the score 7-3, and the Rails were unable to answer, making that the final score.

The Spooner girls enjoyed an offensive explosion in their next outing as they traveled to Barron for a doubleheader on Friday, May 10. The Rail girls whipped Barron 16-1 in the first game, and 15-0 in game two.

On Friday, May 17, Spooner will travel to River Falls for a 7 p.m. non-conference game.

Regionals

Spooner enters the WIAA Division 3 Regionals seeded No. 2. On Tuesday, May 21, the Rails will host either No. 7-seeded Cumberland or No. 10 Webster/Siren.

If the Rails win, they will host either No. 3 St. Croix Falls or No. 6 Cameron in the next round of play on Thursday, May 23.