SKIATOOK — Skiatook put together a string of smart at bats and took an early lead against 5A No. 1 Collinsville before the Lady Cardinals’ sleeping lineup awoke.

Darci Chester and Brittany Kickapoo’s back-to-back RBI doubles put the Lady Cardinals up by the final margin, 3-1, in the fifth inning.

Skiatook plated the game’s first run on Mikael Bunn’s RBI grounder in the third inning. Bunn hit the 1-0 pitch back to the left side of the infield to score the runner from third and reach on error after the Lady Bulldogs successfully executed two sacrifice bunts.

“We have her at leadoff for a reason,” Skiatook coach Angela Foster said. “She’s definitely someone who’s more seasoned in the game. In those big situations, she does it.”

Bunn had one of Skiatook’s two hits in the first at bat of the game. Collinsville starter Ashton Friend was otherwise too good to hit.

Chester and Kickapoo did their damage with one out in the fifth to give Collinsville the lead. Makayla Bowman reached on error, Rylee Delozier singled, and Chester belted a ball back up the middle to score Bowman. Kickapoo cleaned up the rest.

Still, the fifth inning was a rarity, not because the Cardinals scored three runs, but because it was the team’s only scoring inning of the game. The defending state champions, who have outscored district opponents by 75 combined runs, are unaccustomed to the funk Skiatook pitcher Piper Hand had them in Tuesday.

“We had runners in scoring position and had some relatively poor at bats,” Collinsville coach Mike Henry said. “It just took us out of the inning. It happened twice, we even had them in scoring position with two outs. It’s just poor pitch selection.”

Hand got out of a jam in the first, third, sixth and seventh innings to strand runners in scoring position. Her ability to mix fastballs inside and changeups away and out of reach kept the Cardinals from hitting too many balls hard.

Friend pitched well with the lead, too. She had only two strikeouts but allowed only two runners to reach second base, despite having no run support for most of the game.

“The other thing I told them is we were flat, didn’t play very good and still won,” Henry said. “You don’t always have that opportunity. Usually, teams take advantage of that.”

Henry said. “You don’t always have that opportunity. Usually, teams take advantage of that.”

Collinsville 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 — 3 11 1
Skiatook 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 — 1 2 3