HARRISON CENTRAL head coach Darrin Young celebrates the Huskies first Division III softball sectional championship with pitcher Tristen Kovarik, right, and catcher Lizzy Clelland after the final out of their 8-7 triumph over Buckeye Trail Thursday on the Cravat Coal Softball Complex diamond high atop Sally Buffalo Park in Cadiz. It’s Harrison Central’s first sectional title since 2014.

CADIZ — You could just sense that whichever team scored last Thursday would win the Division III co-sectional softball championship.

When the dust had settled, No. 3 seed Harrison Central plated two runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to rally past Buckeye Trail, 8-7, for its first trip to the district tournament since 2014. The Huskies (17-6) will meet Union Local Monday at 5 p.m. at Indian Valley High School in Gnadenhutten. The 8th-seeded Jets (12-10) outscored No. 14 West Muskingum, 15-14, Thursday in Morristown, in the other sectional co-final.

“We got that monkey off our backs. We finally won a sectional title,” Harrison Central fifth-year head coach Darrin Young said. “No one really stood out individually. It was a great team effort. We got down early and in year’s past we would’ve packed it in and got beat, but not this team.

“They battled and battled. They went through the order once and struggled against their pitcher,” Young said in reference to the Warriors’ Sid Beaver who allowed just two hits through the first three frames as her team built a 3-0 lead. “But I knew sooner or later we would break through, and that’s what happened in the fifth inning.”

Harrison Central scored four times in the aforementioned frame to take a 6-5 advantage, but No. 7 seed Buckeye Trail answered with a pair in the top of the sixth to regain a 7-6 edge that set the stage for the Huskies’ comeback.

With one out, speedy leadoff hitter Maddy Butler legged out a bunt for her second such hit of the game. She promptly swiped second — one of six stolen bases in the game for Harrison Central — and went to third when Britton Positano’s sacrifice bunt was bobbled for an error. After Positano took second without a throw — one of five such instances — Buckeye Trail catcher Maizey Lanning couldn’t handle a Beaver offering as Butler raced home with the tying run and Positano went to third. After Sarah Touville walked on a 3-2 pitch — after being down 0-2 — Lexi Ferguson rifled a bullet up the middle to drive in Positano with what turned out to be the game-winner.

“I told the girls when we were down 3-0 and 5-2 to keep chipping away and that’s what they did,” Coach Young said. “They did a good job.”

Huskies’ pitcher Tristen Kovarik, who struggled at times inside the circle, hadn’t retired the Warriors in order over the first six frames. However, that changed in the seventh as she induced a foul popup to first baseman Jenna Young and a groundout to Touville and short before finishing it herself with a strikeout looking.

“That was the only inning that she went 1-2-3. I told her before the inning started that we were only three outs away from the first sectional championship since 2014,” Coach Young noted. “She did a good job.”

Not overpowering, Kovarik struck out three, walked a pair and yielded nine hits. She threw 90 pitches, with 59 being strikes.

Young admitted he was “scared” coming into the game.

“We hadn’t played in six days and that was a lackluster performance (a 9-5 loss at St. Clairsville) on Friday,” he recalled. “We had a decent week of practice, but it’s not like playing a game.”

In talking about a team effort, Butler, Ferguson and Danyel Beadling all had a pair of singles, with the latter two driving in a run each. Touville had key two-run single that keyed the fifth-inning uprising and Lizzy Clelland knocked in the Huskies first two runs with a clutch two-run single with two outs in the fourth. Abby Jozwiak had a double.

Beaver fanned three, issued one free pass and gave up 10 hits. She tossed 98 pitches (72 strikes) and had a trio of one-base hits that drove in two runs. Gracie Roe launched a two-run homer to deep left in the third and also singled, while Emma Smith had a single and double.

Despite both being members of the Ohio Valley Athletic Conference and Buckeye 8, Harrison Central and Union Local did not meet this season. The winner moves on to the district finals on May 19 opposite the winner of No. 2 seed Edison and fourth-seeded Tuscarawas Valley.

Meanwhile, Harrison Central will complete the regular-season portion of its schedule on Saturday when it hosts Garaway in what will be the final game played on the Cravat Coal Complex diamond. The Huskies are moving into the new state-of-the-art all-turf stadium next season.