SLIDESHOW: State 5-A Softball Championship
TAYLORSVILLE -- The undefeated Region 1 champion Royals deserved a better fate.
But injuries are as big a part of the game as runs, hits, errors, strikeouts and walks.
With junior right-hander MaCauley Flint unable to pitch in Thursday's second game of the state 5-A tournament against the two-time defending champion Miners, Roy High didn't go down quietly.
After getting rocked 6-0 by Bingham in the first game and losing Flint to a thumb injury, the Royals suffered just a 2-1 setback in the second game.
The Miners join Alta as the only teams to sweep three consecutive 5-A titles.
The Hawks won three straight championships from 1999-2001, with Bingham's three-peat giving the Miners eight softball titles in state 5-A and 4-A classifications.
Defending state 4-A champion Roy was seeking the third softball title in school history.
Royals coach Mandy Koford won three games on the tournament's final day in 1998, boosting Roy to the 4-A title with a victory over Bonneville and then back-to-back, one-run wins over Fremont.
The Royals fell behind 3-0 in the first inning in the first game versus Bingham, committing two errors -- one in the infield and another in the outfield.
Rachel Mike had an RBI bunt single and Tori Almond had a sacrifice fly in the inning.
Almond, a senior right-hander, tossed a four-hitter with 14 strikeouts and a walk.
The Miners scored two fifth-inning runs on Mike's run-scoring double and Jaden Mortensen's RBI single.
Chalese Fankhauser's run-scoring made it 6-zip in the top of the sixth inning.
Roy had the top of its order batting in the bottom of the sixth. Sophomore Payton Palmer had a leadoff single and a pinch hitter struck out.
Flint, the No. 3 batter, had a foul tip go off her right thumb and was unable to complete her at-bat. Her replacement then struck out.
Flint was replaced by junior right-hander Jamie Aiken in the seventh inning.
The 17-year-old Flint, who threw a perfect game on Wednesday against Taylorsville in a 2-0 victory, had a bruised thumbnail and bruising under her thumb.
Between games, she had the thumbnail punctured to drain blood from underneath the nail.
But as pitching coach Stan Flint said, "You can't grip the ball with a sore thumb."
Jessyca Fulmer went 2-for-3. Flint finished with seven Ks, one walk and a hit batter in six innings.
Aiken pitched the second game, which was scoreless through four innings.
The Miners scored a run in the fifth and sixth innings, with Roy getting a seventh-inning run.
The Royals (26-3 overall), who had their 10-game winning streak snapped in the first game, had just two hits and committed two errors in the second game against Bingham.
Almond pitched all three games Thursday, with 20 scoreless innings.
* BINGHAM 2, FREMONT 0: Almond was flawless against the Silver Wolves, who won four games Wednesday -- Davis, Brighton, Lone Peak and Taylorsville -- to remain alive in the one-loss bracket and tangle with the Miners in the early-afternoon elimination game.
Almond was razor-sharp from the get-go, fanning the first 10 Fremont batters.
She finished with 18 strikeouts in recording a perfect game -- the second one in the 5-A tournament in two days -- and eliminating the Silver Wolves (19-10) from the state 5-A tournament.
Only three Fremont batters made contact with the ball against Almond and her lethal riseball.
Kami Portillo hit come-backers to Almond in the fourth and seventh innings, and Whitney Wallace had a fifth-inning pop-up to Almond.
Whitney Littledike went 2-for-3 with two RBIs for Bingham, which had seven hits off Fremont senior right-hander Kylee Colvin, who was pitching with a pulled muscle in her upper right side.
Jim Fuller coached his final game with Silver Wolves, retiring after 21 seasons with two schools.
He won five state 4-A titles at Box Elder (1995-97), 1999 and 2001 and a 5-A championship with Fremont in 2005.
Fuller, who had 400-plus career victories, never failed to take a team to either Holladay's Cottonwood Complex or the Valley Complex.
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