The Kayhi Lady Kings softball team is gearing up for what promises to be an exciting Region V tournament — which will decide who gets the second state berth from the southeast region.
The Thunder Mountain Falcons punched their ticket to the state tournament by winning the regular season, which leaves one more spot up for grabs between Kayhi, Sitka and Juneau-Douglas: Yaada.at Kalé. If Thunder Mountain wins the region tournament, the runner-up will get the second state berth and be represented as the No. 2 seeded southeast team. If another team is crowned region champion, they will head to state as the top seeded southeast team, while Thunder Mountain will be No. 2. Kayhi enters the Region V tournament as the No. 3 seed after finishing the season 7-5 in conference play.
Kayhi locked themselves into the third seed after losing their final conference game of the season to Sitka 5-4 last weekend. It was Sitka’s first and only conference win of the year.
Kayhi head coach Kalea Allen said her team expected to enter the region tournament as a second or third seed, but doesn’t see that as a negative. Instead, she hopes it will give her team extra motivation.
“Sometimes being the underdogs is not a bad thing, because you’re going into the tournaments wanting to win regardless of if you’re already going to state as the first seed, or at the very bottom,” Allen said. “We’ve done fairly well in the past the last few years at regions. We come to play, we come to fight, and I’m just hoping we bring that fight again this year. We definitely have the physical aspect, we’re capable of winning these games and coming out on top of this tournament, it’s just a matter of mental preparedness, and with how many seniors we have, just making sure they can stay focused throughout this busy week.”
Allen added that her team needs to pay attention to the little things, and detailed that they need to play within themselves and not look too far ahead in order to be successful.
“We need to focus back on each play, each out, each pitch, just keep it small and live in the moment,” Allen said. “I think so many times teams are focused on the future, and that’s where you are all season. Like, ‘Oh we’re at the beginning, we’ve got halfway to go and so forth.’ I think if we can just focus on living in the moment and if we can flush the mistakes right away and be able to capitalize on and enjoy the good moments and keep growing on those, we’ll be successful.”
The Region V tournament will commence when Kayhi faces off against Juneau-Douglas at 4 p.m on Wednesday at Dudley Field. Sitka and Thunder Mountain will wrap up Day I of the three-day tournament with a 6:30 p.m. contest directly after.
*This article was originally published in the Ketchikan Daily News*
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