Lodi Extreme pitcher Tori Shepard readies to deliver a pitch during the Babe Ruth 16U World Series on Sunday in Pittsfield, Mass. Shepard broke her own World Series single-game record with 19 strikeouts in Monday's 1-0 victory over Henderson/Vance of North Carolina. (Courtesy photo)

Shepard, Colburn help Lodi Extreme cap off perfect pool play

The Lodi Extreme is headed to the Babe Ruth 16U Softball World Series finals with a perfect pool-play record and a No. 1 seed.

Lodi capped off a 4-0 pool-play run by edging Henderson/Vance (N.C.) in a 1-0 extra-inning, nail bitter on Monday in Pittsfield, Mass.

With the game in extra innings and the score locked at zero, the Extreme caught a break when Kelsey McCarty reached base on a walk. Henderson/Vance had already recorded two outs, so the Extreme coaching staff called for a hit and run. But as it turned out, they didn't need it.

Instead, Betsy Colburn smacked a triple to bring around McCarty, fueling a 1-0 victory that made Lodi the American Division's top seed.

Despite another walk after Colburn's triple in the Extreme's exciting eighth inning, the lone run was all Lodi could manage. It wound up to be enough as Tori Shepard retired all three batters she faced in the bottom of the eighth. Two of them were sent down on strikes, giving Shepard 19 strikeouts in the contest. The mark beat her own World Series single-game strikeout record of 18 Ks which she happened to set on Saturday in a 9-0 victory over Lebanon.

"Tori is our horse. She is our Big Brown," said Steve Brown, the Booster of Boys and Girls Sports director who is traveling with the team in Massachusetts.

The Extreme only had two hits on the day and they both belonged to Colburn. Her game-winning RBI was enough to outshine Shepard's two-hit, record-breaking performance for player of the game honors.

The Extreme will now take on the best teams in the country in the six-team final tournament. Since Lodi won the American Division, by beating Henderson/Vance, Methacton, Pittsfield and Lebanon over the past three days, it has earned a first-round bye in the finals.

Lodi, which finished in third place in the World Series the last two years, will next play the winner of the battle between Gorham, the National Division's second-place team, and Dumas, which finished third in the National Division, at 5 p.m. on Tuesday.

"They have done really well so far," Brown said of the Extreme. "Hopefully we can get a win (today) and come back on Wednesday and get another. Then we'd take a day off on Thursday and then hopefully just play one game for the championship on Friday."