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Taylorsville • Based on the numbers from this season, Herriman shouldn't have had any trouble with Lehi as the Class 5A softball state tournament entered its last day.

But the variable that messes up the whole equation is how Lehi continually rises to the occasion in the postseason over the past two seasons.

When the final figures came up on Friday, they read 7-2, 7-2.

The Pioneers wrapped up their second straight 5A title by coming out of the one-loss bracket and beating the Mustangs by identical scores in the championship series. The first five-run victory forced Herriman, previously unbeaten in the double-elimination tournament, into a final winner-take-all showdown.

In the finale at the Valley Softball Complex, Lehi rode the pitching arm of Sydney White and a splurge of long balls to another 7-2 victory.

"It feels amazing," said Brogan Kirby, who hit a pair of homers on Friday. "It's the best feeling in the world."

Herriman (26-6) had beaten Lehi (28-9) easily in region play earlier this year, winning 9-1 and 12-1 in the regular season.

But the Pioneers were sharp from the outset of each game when the defense of their 2014 state title was on the line.

"I feel like, after we started state, we were a whole new team," said Lehi junior Stefani Zimmerman, whose two-run homer in the fifth inning of second game was a mighty punctuation mark over the left-field fence. "We shut out all the negatives and focused on all of the positives.

"We had played summer ball with their pitcher [Bryce Taylor], and we just needed to get it out of our heads with her — figure out what we needed to do," Zimmerman added.

After trailing 1-0 in the first game, an elimination game for Lehi, the Pioneers broke a 2-2 tie with two runs in the sixth, and added three in the seventh. Kirby and Zimmerman homered in the last frame and finally chased Taylor from the pitching circle.

For the second contest, Mikaela Thomson started the game for Herriman. But Lehi's four-run fourth had the Mustangs reverting back to Taylor in an effort to contain the Pioneers bats.

"It was a great season. We can't look down at these last two games," Herriman coach Heidi McKissick said. "[Lehi] was on fire the whole tournament. It's the team whose bats are hot. And it was hot all day yesterday — I was hoping it would cool down a little bit."

Instead, it was White who cooled off the Herriman bats.

Prior to Friday's games, the Mustangs had scored at least six runs in every contest this season except two. Twenty times in 2015, Herriman had scored in double figures.

But White, who also homered in the first game to start the scoring for the Pioneers, was clutch with her arm.

"Instead of just telling ourselves we were going to win, we just set little goals that we wanted to accomplish throughout the game," White said. "Like score first, get runners on and not leave runners on, little things like that."

When White struck out Taylor for the final out of the day, she raced home and into leapt into the arms of Kirby.

"Syd pitched those games, too," said Lehi coach Tim Kennedy of the earlier blowout losses to Herriman. "She has summer ball with, I think, three of the Herriman girls, so she knows them.

"She won't say this, but I would say she was extra amped-up," Kennedy added. "She was just a cool cucumber today." —

Lehi 7, Herriman 2

R Lehi repeats as the Class 5A champs by beating Herriman twice on Friday by identical 7-2 scores.

• Sydney White holds down the Mustangs' bats, allowing four hits in the first contest and scattering five in the second.

• Brogan Kirby and Stefani Zimmerman each homer twice throughout the day, and White also slugs a long ball in the first game for Lehi.