There were a lot of firsts on Thursday at Koehler Hall of Fame. It was Central’s first dramatic comeback in the bottom of a seventh inning, the team’s first extra-inning contest, but in the end not quite the squad’s first walk-off victory.

The Golden Eagles led for the majority of the game, rallied to tie the game, came within inches of winning it, before ultimately falling to Mitchell 15-6 in 10 innings in an Eastern South Dakota Conference softball game.

“We came ready to play and I think we did just that. We did an awesome job,” said Central’s Jayla Breaw. “We had some really good hits. We had really good plays, and we got out of some tough innings.”

Central, which had never been in that situation in its first two years as a program, tried different things throughout the 10 innings, but eventually came up short.

“We kind of talked about that at the end of the game, just having to be bold in order to win games. We tried that in a couple of situations and some things went our way and some things didn’t, but that’s the only way to make the outcome go your way once in a while,” said Central coach Cassidy Neer. “We took a risk on a lot of things today and a lot of things did go our way. We got out of a lot of big innings. Our momentum just kind of died out there.”

One chance that was worth the risk was a suicide squeeze attempt in the bottom of the seventh with the score tied at 5-5 with one out. However, that prime opportunity evaporated quickly when the Mitchell pitcher caught the bunt in the air and turned it into an inning-ending double play.

“We hadn’t laid down a bunt yet in this game so to catch the defense off balance and be able to get it done, we were in a perfect situation with speed on third and speed at the plate, one out,” Neer said. “That’s a squeeze situation in any book, so we wanted to take advantage of it and unfortunately everything that could go wrong went wrong. That’s just the way it goes, but I would do it again.”

Central had put itself in a position to win the game thanks in part to a key hit from Breaw moments before when the first baseman doubled in a run, to close the gap to within one.

“I went up there and I was going to hit the ball. That was my approach,” Breaw said. “I was going to help my team get out of this and we were going to make a comeback, and that’s just exactly what we did, and my team was there to pick me up to make me feel better about it.”

Breaw, who had never been in a situation like that before, was prepared for the moment.

“I wasn’t nervous. I was more excited,” Breaw said. “I was so thrilled to be there and have the opportunity to help my team out.”

The Golden Eagles tied the game moments later on an RBI single by Aliyah Torigian setting up the squeeze attempt.

Central jumped in front in the first inning on a passed ball and a two-run bloop single by Addyson Keller over the head of the Mitchell second baseman. The Golden Eagles played with that three-run lead for the first five frames.

“It was just like keeping focus, making sure we did the little things right,” Keller said, “and focusing on getting in and out of the innings.”

That lead stood up until the fifth when the Kernels took advantage of five Central errors to take a 5-3 advantage. It was second time in as many games this young season that the Golden Eagles were plagued by a bad frame. It happened in the first inning against Yankton on Monday.

“That’s kind of what we talked about. You take out that one bad inning and that outcome is completely different, it doesn’t look like that at all,” Neer said. “We had that bad inning against Yankton and we had our bad inning today. Luckily today it was a little bit later, and hopefully next time it just doesn’t happen at all.”

That set the stage for Central’s comeback and the extra three frames.

However, the flood gates opened for Mitchell in the 10th inning when the visitors exploded for 10 runs to take control. Central scored once in the the bottom half of the frame.

Keller led the Golden Eagles with a pair of hits and drove in two runs.

“We definitely learned like what our weaknesses and what our strengths are,” Keller said, “especially like these last two games. … So now we’re just going to apply them to the rest of the games, and hope for better outcomes.”

While the setback was frustrating, it also showed how far the Golden Eagles have come in the past two years.

“It feels awesome,” Breaw said of pushing an ESD foe to the brink. “We played so good and we are so proud of ourselves, and we’re just ready for more matchups like this.”

Mitchell 000 005 000 (10) – 15 14 3

Aberdeen Central 300 000 200 1 – 6 6 7

Macey Linke, Rylee Jennings (7) and Matteah Graves; Kayley Kiesow, Kylee Hoffman (8), Kiesow (9) and Alivia Roettele. 2B – Mitchell, Miedema 2, Delaney Linke, Kinsley Herges; Aberdeen Central, Jayla Breaw.