Brian Merrill’s latest bunch became the first Bees to reach the championship round in eight years. The finale came Friday at Gail Miller Field, the stage for a narrow 3-1 loss despite No. 4 Box Elder outhitting No. 1 Salem Hills 9-6 in the final game of the 5A softball state championship series.

But hits are just that without runs — hits.

“I feel especially bad for the girls,” Merrill said. “We outhit (Salem Hills) 9-6, just bad bounces went their way (and) they made a couple great plays to stop us from having innings. This is what happens. … We just didn’t get the job done.”

Box Elder, ending the season 29-6 overall and the outright champions of Region 5, failed to score on eight different hits, including going empty on a bases-loaded scenario in the sixth. Kennadie Blackmer represented her team’s only run, a fourth-inning solo shot over the right-field wall, for a 2-1 ballgame in her ninth consecutive start of the postseason.

CONNER BECKER, Standard-Examiner

Box Elder’s junior ace ended the day allowing three runs on six hits, a walk and eight strikeouts through six full frames of work.

Blackmer’s homer, following junior Kailee Hall’s moonshot that served as the decisive run in Game 2 earlier on Friday — which was only Salem Hills’ second loss this season — laid the framework for a Game 3 comeback that ultimately wasn’t meant to be.

Blackmer, junior Lucy Griffin, and junior Madeline Jeppsen each singled on in the sixth, only for Jocile Norman to mow down senior Maclee Willard and freshman Madelynn Checketts swinging.

Norman was especially elusive, too, with only a single run allowed on nine hits and five strikeouts working in her favor. The lack of answers, Willard said, put Box Elder in a corner.

“KJ was overdue for that home run,” Willard said. “We’d been expecting that one all week long. She’s an amazing hitter, and it got us on the board. We trust each other, so knowing she did that, we were expected to follow it and our hits didn’t land the perfect way. But we’re proud of her.”

CONNER BECKER, Standard-Examiner

No inning was safe, though, Willard insisted, and Friday’s final fireworks had all the makings of a game itching to burst open. After all, the Bees climbed out of a 6-1 deficit against Spanish Fork to release themselves from bracket play and qualify for the title series.

“This team had a bond that no other Box Elder team has ever had,” Willard said. “We love each other like sisters. The bond between all of us was unreal, and I think that’s truly the reason we were here today.”

Hall doubled into center field for a one-out, extra-base hit in the top of the seventh, but the dooming sequence soon followed: junior Izibel Mason grounded out to shortstop, Norman intentionally walked Blackmer on the next at-bat, and Lucy Griffin grounded into a fielder’s choice that brought the rally caps down once and for all.

The stage is big, and Box Elder maximized every attainable contest in the playoff’s design. To merely get down to Provo, Merrill said, is a feat of its own for anybody in Utah’s Class 5A.

“I believe it’s the hardest division in the state, to get to this place in 5A just with so many good teams,” Merrill said.

Willard, Lucy Braegger, Katelyn Oki and Quincy Lish will all walk away from the program as they graduate from high school this spring.

“They’re great women,” Merrill said. “They’re going to go off and do great things; that’s our legacy. That’s what we want our program to be able to do is build people.”

Other teams came close, and others even looked the part, but this year’s team set the bar.

“They better watch out because they’ll be coming even harder at them,” Willard said. “We have some really good underclassmen coming up, and they’re going to do an amazing job. I would not be shocked to see them back here.”

Connect with prep sports reporter Conner Becker via email at cbecker@standard.net, X @ctbecker, and Instagram @standardexaminer sports.