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PROVO — Kaysen Korth was in the zone Friday afternoon as Riverton looked to close out its second-straight state softball title at BYU's Gail Miller Field.
The senior pitcher scattered just four hits with 10 strikeouts as the Silverwolves celebrated repeat 6A titles with a 11-1 win over West.
And the only thing that may have been better was her bat.
Korth also went 3-for-3 with a walk, two runs scored and two RBIs, and Jolie Mayfield was 3-for-4 with a three-run home run and another run scored for the Silverwolves (28-1).
"Hitting is so much more failure-first, so it's hard to keep on failing," Korth said. "Yesterday and the day before, I was really failing. But I love when days like this happen, because it makes days like this worth it."
And she did it all with a bloody pitching hand.
In the first inning of Friday's game, Korth popped a long-held blood blister on her pitching hand that she's been nursing since the Silverwolves' first tournament of the year in St. George. With help from coaches and the athletic training staff, she constantly sealed it shut each inning with super glue — though sometimes the glue split mid-inning, when she'd slyly wide her hand off on the back of her pants.
"It was pretty big this morning, and we tried to drain it," Korth said. "It wouldn't drain, so I thought it would be fine. And then in the first inning, it just popped right open and started going everywhere."
Of course, nobody noticed until the Silverwolves were lifting the trophy and taking team selfies with the championship bracket.
The Weber State signee followed up last year's dominant 6A MVP run that featured a 0.37 ERA in 55.2 innings by doing something even bigger: batting .532 with seven home runs, eight doubles and driving in 43 runs en route to a 24-1 record as a starter.
If Korth's bat isn't on, her arm can more than make up the difference with a 0.57 ERA. If her arm isn't — a rarity, if ever — her bat is more than enough. Add it to Mayfield, who led 6A with 18 home runs and 62 RBIs, and the duo become virtually unstoppable for the Silverwolves.
"She's just as much of a weapon offensively as she is defensively," Riverton coach Katelyn Elliott said of her ace. "And mentally, to play both sides of the ball that well is a big mental strength — especially when you may not be having a great day pitching or hitting. But she never lets both slide.
"She brings it on both sides of the ball."
Riverton got all the scoring it needed in a big first inning, sparked by Kylee Ruesch's two-run double.
Korth did the rest, including fanning her 10th batter with back-to-back K's in the top of the sixth to help the Silverwolves pull away for good.
"Offensively, we put up a lot of good runs against pitchers," Elliott said. "And Kaysen held down a lot of good hitters. They only scored one run against her the whole tournament."
Brooklyn Tapusoa's two-out RBI double in the top of the fifth plated Grace Worthington for West (23-5), the first run allowed by the Silverwolves in the 6A state tournament after the first baseman led off the fifth reaching on a throwing error.
But Korth pitched her way out of the inning without any further damage, and Riverton marched to its third title in program history with Mayfield's 19th home run of the season — just two off the all-time mark in state history.
"What's amazing about Kaysen and Jolie is that they never belittle anyone who is beneath them; they put their arms around the younger players and bring them along with them," Elliott said. "That's what you see on our team.
"Nobody's carrying equipment because they are freshmen. Everybody carries the load on this team, and that's led by Jolie and Kasen and the upperclassmen. They are phenomenal, and they carry themselves well off the field."
