AURORA | The Cherokee Trail and Eaglecrest softball teams met to decide the Centennial League championship and both squads will also be home Friday for Class 5A regional postseason tournaments.
The Cougars prevailed over the Raptors 1-0 Oct. 9 to win a third consecutive league championship, as Sydney Cobb threw a complete game with 15 strikeouts. The pitching duel between Cobb and Eaglecrest’s Haisley Elliott was decided in the fifth inning when Peyton Contes tripled and pinch runner Abby Anderson scored on a mishandled grounder (full game story, here).
Cherokee Trail (18-4) capped the regular season the next day with a 12-2 win over ThunderRidge and moved into the No. 2 spot in the Colorado High School Activities Association’s Seeding Index, which determined the entire 32-team field released by the state’s governing body Monday (complete 5A regional brackets and schedule, here).
Coach Caley Mitchell’s Cougars will play host to the 5A Region 2 tournament Oct. 17 at the Aurora Sports Park and will share Complex A with coach Yvette Hendrian’s Raptors, who finished 18-5 and as the No. 5 overall seed.
Cherokee Trail’s regional includes No. 15 Horizon (16-7), No. 18 Arvada West (14-8) and No. 31 Liberty (11-12), while Eaglecrest’s group has No. 12 Fort Collins (16-6-1), No. 21 Mountain Vista (12-11) and Denver North (18-4). Both tournaments begin at 10 a.m.
Aurora’s other regional qualifier is No. 16 Grandview (14-9), which is one of the four teams in the Region 1 tournament scheduled for Oct. 18 at Broomfield High School. Coach Liz Carter’s Wolves have a 10 a.m. contest against No. 17 Chatfield (11-12) with the winner moving on to face either host and No. 1 Broomfield (20-2) or No. 32 Grand Junction Central (8-13).
Two teams from each of the eight four-team regionals make the 5A state tournament Oct. 24-25.
Courtney Oakes is Aurora Sentinel Sports Editor. Reach him at sports@sentinelcolorado.com. Twitter/X: @aurorasports. IG: Sentinel Prep Sports
