The Lady Raiders got settled in for a 7-hour bus ride home. They had just split with North Central Missouri to complete a 38-win regular season, one of the most successful in school history, and were tied for first with Crowder and Jefferson with a 19-5 Region XVI record. They got comfortable, talked, laughed and made memories. Sophie Wunderlich quickly fell asleep. Three Rivers had the tiebreaker against Crowder after winning 3 of 4, but had split with Jefferson. The No. 1 seed for the Region XVI tournament would be decided by the fourth tiebreaker, a coin flip. Coach Jeff Null sat at the front of the bus on a video call. Jefferson head coach Tony Cook called heads, the coin came up tails, and Null yelled the good news. “We heard coach say that we got the first seed and the bus went crazy,” freshman third baseman Kirstien Loman said. “We were jumping up and down, screaming really loud, we worked hard for this.” The noise woke up Wunderlich, who gave a few claps and a quick cheer and went back to sleep. “I went back to sleep happy, that’s for sure,” Wunderlich said. Three Rivers gets a first round bye and will play the winner of No. 4 Maple Woods and No. 5 North Central in the second round of the double elimination tournament at 3:45 p.m. on Friday in Joplin. The championship is scheduled for noon Sunday and with an “if necessary” game to follow should whoever comes out of the winner’s bracket lose the noon game. “I think we all knew the potential we were held up to with the past teams,” Three Rivers freshman pitcher Summer Shockley said. “I think a big part of it is having the right leaders and not just having one leader or two leaders but everyone being able to step up in the moment when they need to, and just being able to vibe off each other and one person pick the other person up whether they are the best player or the worst player on the team.” Coming into the season, sophomore center fielder and leadoff hitter Randi Scruggs was returning after being selected to the All Region XVI team. Fellow sophomores Kira Cunningham, Kabrien Rogers and Ali Law were in the corner outfield spots, Carleigh Burnett was a reliable No. 2 pitcher as a freshman and backup first baseman Peyton Gunn added a reliable bat in the middle of the lineup as a designated hitter, and power as a pinch hitter. But six freshman didn’t return for one reason or another, giving Three Rivers six or fewer returning sophomores for the third year in a row.

That balanced freshman class has been nothing short of record-breaking. Allison Pingel has broken the Three Rivers singleseason home run record and RBI record, and with 18 home runs and counting, is just four home runs away from tying the career record. She is just the second freshman in Three Rivers history to hit even 10 home runs. The clean-up hitter also leads the team with a .470 batting average, .508 on base percentage and a .884 slugging percentage. If her slugging percentage holds above .726, she’ll break that record too. Freshman shortstop Kristyn Carpenter has hit eight home runs in the No. 2 spot, tied for second with Law. She’s also stolen 33 bases and her and Scruggs combined have stolen 78 bases. Shockley entered the fall as the team’s No. 3 pitcher after winning a state championship for Van Buren High School and finished the fall as the ace. This spring, she’s 22-6 with a 1.86 ERA and is averaging 9.53 strikeouts per seven innings. Fellow freshman Macy Rogers won the No. 2 spot and is 10-2 with a 3.71 ERA while Burnett and freshman Kari Hatridge have eaten up innings in relief and in occasional starts while also getting three wins each. The Raiders have a .948 team fi elding percentage, led by Scruggs who hasn’t made an error all season. Freshman catcher Gracie King and Pingel played in every game and each made one error, as has Rogers and Burnett in the circle. Eleven players have made three or fewer errors and eight players have a fielding percentage above .900. Things started to click when the Lady Raiders returned from winter break. “I didn’t know half these girls and I’d never played with them before, but now they are just like family to me,” Wunderlich said. “New people scare me but I haven’t had any issue with that. I love them all.” Three Rivers won its first nine games, which boosted the chemistry further, but then lost seven straight while playing in difficult tournaments. However, it was the only losing streak of the season. Literally. Since March 13 the Lady Raiders have not lost consecutive games. “We don’t have selfish people on this team, so that is a big deal,” Carpenter said. “From the fall we really didn’t know each other and now we know each other and we are around each other all the time. Our chemistry is really good at this point.” One more three-game winning streak would give the Lady Raiders their first Region XVI championship in school history.

Scott Borkgren - Daily American Republic