The Washington Demons took a tough loss in the State semifinals Thursday, losing 2-0 to Dallas Center-Grimes.

The Demons faced a pitcher in Paige Lowary who topped out on the radar gun at 71 MPH, and threw a one hitter in the opening round of play.

She treated the Demons the same way, striking out a incredible 13 Demons, and was one out away from throwing a no hitter, before Kaitlin Buchholz broke it up with a single in the top of the seventh.

Washington made things exciting in the seventh, with another single by Lauren Vittetoe and a walk by Joni Erwin to load the bases, but the strikeout of Ashley Rausch ended the game giving the Fillies the win.

Their only two runs came in part to one of the three errors the Demons committed.

Washington head coach Angie Shrader was disappointed about the loss, saying that they weren’t playing Demon ball, but is ready to come out and get third place to show people that the Demons are for real.

“I just can’t fault our kids on is their effort and not giving up, we got down on a couple of situations and we didn’t give up, and that is the important thing, and we’re not done, we get to come back tomorrow and we can choose to come out and turn things around and play Demon softball for seven innings and three outs an inning,” Shrader said.

“We played a good ball club there is no doubt about it, I think most people here were surprised that it was a 2-0 ball game with them, because a lot of people find it interesting that we’re even here, which is surprising to me. So we’ll move on and get ready for tomorrow and get our third place finish at State.”

The Demons play No. 1 ranked Clear Creek Amana today at 3:30. The Clippers are 41-2, they are batting .461 as a team and have a .516 on base percentage. Their pitching staff has a combined ERA of 1.23 and opponents are hitting just .169 off of them.

You can catch all of the action of this third place game right here on AM and FM KCII and KCIIradio.com under radio plus with pregame around 3:10, and first pitch at 3:30. The one to count on for state softball coverage is AM and FM KCII.