louisville — An early pitchers’ duel turned into a runaway victory for the Nanih Waiya High School softball team Thursday night.

Cathedral School’s Mollie Devening and Nanih Waiya’s Ryan Holdiness each pitched three scoreless innings before Nanih Waiya was able to get to Devening for one run in the fourth inning.

But that one run opened the floodgates, and Nanih Waiya scored four runs in the fifth inning and five in the sixth to beat Cathedral 10-0 in Game 1 of the MHSAA South State Championship series.

“It was just a battle at first like I figured it was going to be,” Cathedral coach Gary Blackwell said. “Both pitchers were doing well, and then they got a run in the fourth.”

Blackwell said in the fifth and sixth innings Nanih Waiya was able to get runners on base for the best hitters in the lineup, and those hitters found gaps to score those runners.

Nanih Waiya finished with 10 hits to Cathedral’s five. Blackwell said the difference was Cathedral’s inability to get big hits.

“We had runners on base every inning,” Blackwell said. “We just couldn’t get bunts down and couldn’t get hits when we had runners on.”

Mckenzie Milligan led Cathedral’s offense with a 2-for-3 performance. Ginny Daggett added a double for the Lady Green Wave.

Blackwell said he hopes the lopsided loss will motivate his team for Game 2 Saturday.

“We just have to get serious and get our game faces on,” he said. “We just had an old-fashioned butt kicking, and hopefully we’ll get serious and put it back together, which we’ve done before.”

Blackwell said he is confident his team is mentally tough enough to win the next two games to advance.

“We’ve been able to (recover) all year,” he said. “These girls have got game, and we’ll get it together and try to come back with some wins on Saturday.”

Game 2 of the series will be at 3 p.m. Saturday. Game 3 will follow Game 2 if necessary.