NAMPA -- The 5A Softball State Championship trophy will be heading to a new home this year, after the reigning champion Pocatello Thunder were eliminated Friday.
Pocatello won the school's first ever blue trophy in softball last season, and entered this weekend's tournament as the division's top seed and title favorite. But they suffered a 6-4 defeat at the hands of the Skyview Hawks during Friday's morning session.
Then, after a rousing five-run comeback in the bottom of the sixth, they fell to the Middleton Vikings, who answered with six runs of their own in the top of the seventh, Friday afternoon.
Junior Taylee Rogers was tagged with the loss in relief.
Rogers was unable to pitch around a pair of errors in the seventh, her only inning of work, resulting in five of the six runs scored in the frame being unearned.
In the bottom of the seventh, Pocatello could not reproduce their sixth-inning thunder, which included home runs from Azlin Bullock and Jakobi Nebeker.
Blackfoot, the bracket's No. 2-seed, lost to the seventh-seeded Burley Bobcats, 4-2, to open the tourney, Thursday. Then they lost a loser-out game to the same Middleton club that knocked out Pocatello, 11-1, Friday morning.
The Broncos' lone run Friday came on a solo homer from Shea Staley.
Middleton and Bishop Kelly will play Friday afternoon in a loser-out game. Lewiston and Skyview will battle it out in the semifinals of the winners bracket, with the winner advancing the championship round with their first loss still in their pocket.