The Grant Union/Prairie City Lady Prospectors celebrate their win over the Weston-McEwen/Griswold Lady TigerScots 10-0 in the OSAA Class 2A/1A state championships at Jane Sanders Stadium in Eugene on June 2, 2023.

State softball title shows grit, determination

It took two years of hard work, but the Grant Union/Prairie City Lady Prospectors got the job done on Friday, June 2, capturing the Oregon Class 2A softball trophy that eluded their grasp last year.

The 2022 edition of the Lady Pros was a juggernaut, steamrolling the competition to rack up 23 straight wins before finally suffering their first loss — in the last game of the regular season — to 4A La Grande. They gathered themselves up and charged into the postseason, scoring 34 runs and giving up just one in the first three rounds en route to the state title game, where they ran into a rugged Lakeview squad. Even though they had bested Lakeview twice during the regular season, this time the Lady Pros came up short, falling 5-3 in the championship.

While a second-place finish is nothing to be ashamed of, it was a bitter end to a brilliant season, an abrupt reversal of fortune that must have rankled Zach Williams’ squad. But it also appears to have stoked the team’s competitive fires.

The Lady Pros came into this season like a team with something to prove, putting up an outstanding 22-3 regular-season record that included 15 shutout victories. They continued their dominance in the playoffs, notching wins of 15-0, 8-0 and 5-2 before defeating Weston-McEwen/Griswold by a 10-0 score in a mercy rule-shortened title game.

The Lady Prospectors’ state softball championship is a testament not only to the team’s hard work and athletic excellence, but also to the grit and resolve necessary to turn disappointment into determination and, ultimately, victory.

Take a bow, ladies.

And while we’re at it, let’s not forget Grant County’s other spring sports standouts.

In the state track championships at Eugene’s fabled Hayward Field, Prairie City’s Eli Wright was the Class 1A runner-up in the 110-meter hurdles with a time of 16.02 seconds and finished fourth in the javelin with a throw of 47.63 meters. In Class 2A, Grant Union senior Riddick Hutchison placed third in the javelin, hurling his spear 48.28 meters.

The Prairie City golf team, revived this season after a 17-year hiatus, shocked the world with freshman phenom Sawyer Quinton, who won the district championship by an incredible 34 strokes and went on to place 25th in the state tournament.

And in the arena of intellectual competition, Long Creek High School reigned supreme. Grant County’s smallest school cruised to an easy victory in the 2023 Academic Bowl, besting 11 other teams in the general knowledge competition for High Desert League schools. In a performance worthy of the Lady Prospector softball team, Long Creek built such a daunting lead that the match was called early in the Academic Bowl equivalent of the mercy rule.

How ’bout them Grant County kids!