BENTONVILLE -- The top two softball teams in the 6A-West Conference faced off Thursday, and the game lived up to the records.
Bentonville senior Kasey Wood, a University of Arkansas signee, shot an RBI liner down the left-field line to snap a 1-1 tie as the Lady Tigers claimed a 2-1 win against Springdale Har-Ber at the Tiger Athletic Complex.
The win was Bentonville's 19th straight, while Har-Ber's 10-game win streak was snapped.
"She's just a good player," Bentonville coach Kent Early said of his third baseman. "I mean, it was good that she was in that spot to come up big, so, Kasey does what Kasey does."
The Lady Tigers trailed 1-0 in the bottom of the fourth as Har-Ber sophomore Anniston Reith kept the Bentonville hitters silent. But that changed when catcher Sara Watson led off the inning with a single. A groundout moved courtesy runner Lexi Gunter to second. Audrey Lacina singled through the infield and Gunter slid in at home to tie the game at 1-1, and Lacina moved to second on the throw home.
Wood followed with a 1-0 liner down the line in left that brought in Lacina for the lead.
"[Getting a hit is] something I love to do for my teammates," Wood said. "It was a good at-bat and a great inning from our offense."
The Wildcats scored first in the top of the fourth with a solo homer by Madison Pratt, her first since the 2020 season.
Bentonville pitcher Ryann Sanders settled down after the Pratt homer and came up big several times including a two-on, two-out situation in the fifth when she got Pratt on a called third strike to end the inning. Sanders struck out seven in the complete-game win.
"We kept battling," Early said. "That's how it is. When you get pitcher's duels like that, somebody's gotta give and you gotta keep trying to give yourself chances."
Reith pitched a complete game for the Wildcats, giving up two runs on five hits while sealing one strikeout.
"I thought it was a pitcher's duel," Early said. "Great game. I thought Anniston [Reith] did a heck of a job. We hit a lot of popups. We missed a lot of balls, but the kids rallied when they needed to, and we were able to put one more across."
The first time this season Har-Ber and Bentonville faced each other was March 8 when the Wildcats won 9-0.
Bentonville's win streak grew to 19 games, and it move to 10-0 in the 6A-West.
"Feels good to do what we do," Wood said of the win. "We didn't lose our composure under adversity and, you know, we kept our goals in mind and stayed on the straight and narrow of what we're trying to do here.
"I'm excited for our future. We got a lot of games coming up, important games. A lot of memorable things, we gotta try and soak in every moment. So, we'll be fun to, you know, push through during those final games and just try to live in the moment."
Next up, Har-Ber will host Rogers at 5 p.m. at home on Monday, and Bentonville will hit the road to face Frontenac, Mo., on Saturday at noon.