Silverado alive in softball winner’s bracket

Dan Eckles

Friday, May 21, 1999 | 11:19 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The Silverado Skyhawks once again look to be the Southern Zone softball savior.

Silverado, which has finished fourth in the state the past two years, was the only Las Vegas-area school to win a first-round game and stay in the winner's bracket of the 4A State Tournament Thursday.

The Skyhawks got a solid relief effort from sophomore Keely Commerford and withstood a pair of Carson rallies to capture a 5-3 victory over the Northern Zone's fourth seed in the tourney opener.

"We have a lot of respect for the North clubs, because we haven't done a good job against them," Silverado coach Chuck Pope said. "Carson is a gutsy club. They kept hitting and coming at us."

The Skyhawks (30-10) move on to play defending state champion Reed (19-8) today at noon. The Raiders advanced with a 5-2 win over Bonanza in a rematch of last year's 4A title game.

Bonanza (30-6) stayed alive, however, ousting Carson from the tournament with a 7-6 win in the loser's bracket. Also keeping title hopes alive was Durango (29-11), which lost 3-0 to Galena in the morning but bounced back to eliminate Cimarron-Memorial, 4-1, in the afternoon session.

Here are some highlights from other action:

* REED 5, BONANZA 2: The Bengals held a 1-0 lead after three innings, but it was short-lived. Reed jumped on top in the bottom of the fourth when Megan O'Connor and Laura Edmonds pounded a pair of pitches from the Bengals' Christy Carrasco for solo homers.

Bonanza knotted the score at two in the sixth when Sara Bausher doubled and scored, but that's as good as it got for the Bengals, as Reed answered with three runs in the bottom of the inning to secure the win.

* GALENA 3, DURANGO 0: 1998 State Player of the Year Kourtney Davis put together her best outing since returning from mid-season shoulder surgery, firing a no-hitter with 16 strikeouts to help the Grizzlies advance.

* WOOSTER 1, CIMARRON-MEMORIAL 0: The Spartans gave the Northern Zone champs all they could handle, but a sixth-inning error by Cimarron leftfielder Victoria Morache allowed the Colts' Sarah Nelson to score the game's only run.

Sophomore pitcher Chelsea Crosby, the north's regular-season MVP, baffled the Spartans all afternoon, giving up just one hit -- a sixth-inning single by Morache.