Westminster Christian nails down 1st regional title

It’s been a big week for the Westminster Christian softball team.

On Tuesday, the Warriors won a regional game for the first time in program history.

On Saturday, they did themselves one better, claiming the program’s first regional championship — and they did it at Jockey Field in East Dundee, Westminster’s home field.

Becca Fugiel had 3 hits including a double, triple and 3 RBI and her sister Rachel scattered 7 hits with 4 strikeouts and 4 walks as the Warriors defeated Christian Liberty 7-4 in a Class 1A regional title game.

Westminster (12-8) will move on to the Gilman Iroquois West sectional to play Gardner South Wilmington on Tuesday at 4:30 p.m.

“It’s pretty exciting. We played really well,” said Westminster coach John Wedell. “We’re at a point where we finally have our whole team together. It’s been a challenging year with injuries but we’re finally able to have everyone in the positions they should be in instead of trying to fit square pegs into round holes.”

Christian Liberty (9-13) jumped ahead 2-0 in the top of the first but the Warriors came back with 4 runs in the bottom of the inning and never looked back. Rachel Fugiel added a double for Westminster, which also played an errorless game on defense.

“Defensively we played extremely well behind Rachel,” said Wedell, whose team beat Christian Liberty for the third time this season. “Give Christian Liberty credit, they played a solid game. We were fortunate to get those first four and from that point is was a good clean struggle.”

Beth Cunningham and Hannah Miller each had triples for Christian Liberty. Darby Calkins added a double. Losing pitcher Megan Sullivan was 3-for-4 with 2 RBI. She struck out 5 and walked 4.