DENVER, Colo. – The eight-seeded Cal State Dominguez Hills softball team struck early with a five-run lead but No. 5 seed Rogers State used the long ball three times at a windy Assembly Athletic Complex to beat the Toros in walkoff fashion 6-5 to win game one of the best-of-3 NCAA Championship Series Monday afternoon.
 
The Toros must beat the fourth-ranked Hillcats twice on Tuesday in order to win the national championship. Due to rain on the forecast, the NCAA Championship committee elected to move the game to 10 a.m. PDT out of hope to avoid it.
 
After tying the NCAA Championship final site record for hits with 12, Raquel Jaime went 2-for-4 to now stand alone in the record book, which had been set by Lock Haven's Sarah Norris in 2009.
 
Kaylee Hull got the Toros on the board with a solo home run in the third inning and then she helped cash in two of the four runs scored in the fourth to give the Toros a 5-0 lead. Katelyn Sturm came up clutch prior with a two-run single up the middle that put the Toros ahead 3-0 prior to Hull's second at-bat.
 
Ashley Wies got off to a promising start after tossing shutouts for the first three innings. But Rogers State got back-to-back two-run home runs in the fourth inning with one out that cut the Toros lead down to one. Alyssa Olague came in that inning and stopped the bleeding to stay in front.
 
The lead was then lost in the next inning, when the Hillcats used an RBI single to bring the tying run in from third.
 
Olague threw three innings of relief while Wies threw 3.1. Each of them had two strikeouts, which for Olague moved her to one away from tying her pitching coach Stephanie Guerra's single season record of 232 set back in 2013.
 
The Toros offense, meanwhile, was limited to seven hits, the lowest number in their NCAA Championship run.