GREELEY, Colo. — The Montana softball team’s season ended with a loss to Northern Colorado on Thursday but only after one of the Grizzlies’ best offensive outings of the year.
Montana pounded out 12 hits, matched a season high with three home runs and put up nine runs in a 19-9 loss to the No. 4 seed Bears at the Big Sky Conference championship in Greeley, Colo.
In their final games as Grizzlies, Grace Hardy and Presley Jantzi hit home runs, as did Madison Tarrant. Jantzi finished the day 3 for 4, and senior Kynzie Mohl was 2 for 2 to end the tournament a perfect 4 for 4.
Montana’s nine runs and 12 hits were both the third-highest outputs of the season for the Grizzlies.
“We swung the bats well today,” said coach Stef Ewing. “I told the seniors before the game, swing like you’ve never missed. It was awesome to see so many of them come up with big hits and home runs.
“We knew we had to swing the bats to stay in the game and the girls kept doing it and kept putting pressure on them.”
After Northern Colorado scored twice in the top of the first (the Bears were the visiting team on their home field), Tarrant gave Montana its only lead of the tournament in the bottom half of the inning.
Jantzi doubled and Mohl drew a walk, then Tarrant crushed a ball over the fence in left for her second career home run to put Montana up 3-2.
Northern Colorado answered in the top of the second with a pair of three-run home runs, then added six runs in the third and five in the fourth to build its lead to 19-5.
Montana scored two runs in the bottom of the second when Mohl lifted a pop-up to short right field that the UNC second baseman lost in the sun. Two runners scored on the play.
In the bottom of the fourth, Hardy led off with her first home run since her sophomore season, the fourth of her career.
Two batters later, Jantzi hit her eighth career home run, moving her into the top 10 in program history, the 16th offensive category in which she now sits in the top 10.
Montana scored its eighth run in the bottom of the fifth on an RBI ground out by Hardy and made it 19-9 on an RBI single to left by Anna Cockhill, who went 2 for 3, her eighth multi-hit game of the season.
The Grizzlies had two runners on base when the game ended, enough that a home run would have eliminated their run-rule deficit and forced Northern Colorado to keep playing into the sixth.
“We fought all year. We were never going to go down easy,” said Ewing. “They bought into that and continued to fight. That’s a great thing for us to be able to build off of, that confidence offensively.
“Our culture is where it needs to be and that’s the biggest thing to get this thing going. What a last day for our seniors with the way they were swinging it.”
Northern Colorado advances to face either Portland State or Sacramento State on Friday in another elimination game. Montana’s season comes to an end with a record of 8-42 in Ewing’s first season.
“It’s a really special group of kids who really bought in and laid the foundation for the change that this program is going to have,” said Ewing.
“The wins may not have been as many as we wanted but, man, did we make a lot of progress this year. It’s coming. I feel really good about it.
“Really proud of what they did today and excited for the future of Griz softball.”
