The Washington Demon softball team hits the road Saturday to take on Clear Creek Amana in the regional semifinal round of the class 4A tournament. Washington was a come-from-behind 10-7 winner over Grinnell on Thursday in the opening round, spurred by an eight run fifth inning to erase a 7-1 deficit. For the year the Demons are hitting .309 as a team, led by Kaitlyn Mitchell at .405. She has 32 hits and 13 runs scored. Kellie Dallmeyer holds the team lead with 25 runs scored and Cara Linnenkamp has driven in a Demon best 26. In the circle Washington has a team ERA of 5.70 led by Emmy Wenger at 5.03 in 40 innings with a 2-3 record. Linnenkamp has worked 84 innings with a 6-9 record and 5.15 ERA including picking up the playoff win earlier this week.

Clear Creek Amana comes into the fray with an overall mark of 14-9, they finished 12-8 in the WAMAC Conference. They had a bye through the first round of regional play. On the year the Clippers are hitting .332 led by Ainsley Schrock at .463 with 31 hits and 37 runs scored. Gabrielle Bedford leads the Clippers with 23 runs. In the circle CCA has a team ERA of 2.93 led by Raina Henze at 1.21 with an 11-1 overall record on the year. This week Washington Demon head coach Ben Obermann talked about what his team needs to be prepared for in facing the Clippers. “We have to field the bunt better, and we have to get started earlier offensively. CCA is a good team. They have a senior pitcher who has logged a lot of innings. We saw her two years ago in the playoffs. She’s not overpowering but has great spin. A different type of pitcher than we saw against Grinnell. We need to have a gap to gap approach. With the way we hit against Grinnell we should have a lot of confidence and a lot of girls have seen Henze.”

These two teams haven’t met since the Demons made runs to the state tournament in the early part of the last decade. The winner of tonight’s game advances to the regional final to play for the right to go to the state tournament in Fort Dodge. You can hear all of the action live tonight from Oxford on FM 106.1 KCII, beginning with the Washington HyVee pregame show at 6:30 and first pitch 7p.m.