05/06/26 Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmunski / Claysburg-Kimmel starter Isabella Paris (right) hands the ball to reliever Launa Musselman in the third inning.

A year ago, Claysburg-Kimmel was the only team from the Mirror’s core coverage area to win a District 6 championship in high school softball, and the Lady Bulldogs have been near the top if not at the top among all area teams during coach Mike Barbarini’s 26-year tenure.

Claysburg enters the final weekend of the regular season ranked No. 2 in the District 6 Class 1A behind Conemaugh Valley, which lost to the Bulldogs in the semifinals two years ago and fell to Juniata Valley in last year’s bracket.

But C-K enters this year’s postseason at just 5-4 in its last nine games. However, all of those “We just have just seemed to make one mental error here or there that has cost us games,” Barbarini said. “We had a baserunning mistake (against Southern Huntingdon). (Tuesday) we lost 1-0 to Mount Union, and we had three girls thrown out at home plate — just mental errors that we’re not getting through.”

The Lady Bulldogs began the season 11-0 and celebrated their 11th win — a decisive 25-9 win over District 5 softball power Everett — as it was Barbarini’s 400th career win.

He’s hoping his players can all catch fire again the way they did that afternoon.

“We’d love to do that,” Barbarini said. “We have had a lot of games where they have all been hot. We scored 25 runs on Everett, and we were hitting shots. Everyone put everything together. Hopefully we can do that. It’s not that we’re not performing. We are. There have just been a couple games where our bats went cold.”

Two of those games came just after beating Everett in back-to-back losses to Berlin Brothersvalley and Tussey Mountain.

“In the Berlin game we lost by one run, we made some physical errors in the field to let them score three runs,” Barbarini said. “The Tussey Mountain game we lost, we hit a lot to the fence, but they were playing us at the fence and made the catches.”

There will be plenty of playoff competition for the Bulldogs this season in addition to Conemaugh Valley.

Purchase Line, which C-K beat in last year’s postseason, has a star pitcher in sophomore Rylee Mahaffey, who has 177 strikeouts in just under 100 innings pitched and a 1.19 ERA.

Juniata Valley, the team that lost last year’s District 6 final to Claysburg-Kimmel 5-4, is ranked No. 4 but was without its starting pitcher, Braelyn Hall, for parts of the season. Hall recently returned to the lineup and pitching circle.

Three teams from District 6 Class 1A make the PIAA playoffs, but winning the district puts the champion in the upper state bracket and gives the team a much better chance to advance deep into the postseason.

The runner-up plays the District 9 champion, and the third-place team plays the WPIAL champ — both very tough draws.

Class 2A

The only other Mirror core coverage area team that will enter the postseason with a high seed is Bellwood-Antis in Class 2A.

The Lady Blue Devils will have to contend with undefeated and state-ranked West Shamokin, the defending District 6 2A champion and Southern Huntingdon, which has a long history of postseason softball success as the other two top seeds.

“We had an idea that we would have a good season this year,” Bellwood-Antis coach Heather Quick said. “We weren’t going to put all our eggs in one basket by any means, but they have worked very hard in the offseason. They showed up for optional workouts when obviously they didn’t have to. They put in a lot of time.”

Bellwood-Antis has received excellent pitching from both Palynn Gregg and Lainey Stinson and at times, the Lady Devils have had a good all-around performance from their lineup offensively.

B-A has a good mix of some experience and a lot of young talent, so it will be interesting to see how it performs against teams with such great playoff experience.

Only the champion will advance to the PIAA playoffs.

Class 3A-4A-5A-6A

Central Cambria, Cambria Heights and Tyrone should all make the District 6 Class 3A postseason, but all three teams will be on the road as lower seeds and have to pull off major upsets against teams that have been softball powerhouses for many years like Philipsburg-Osceola and Bald Eagle Area.

Bedford, which suffered its first loss on Thursday to Forest Hills, is also part of this bracket as District 5 is combined with District 6.

There are only two teams in Class 4A — Bellefonte and Juniata — and Juniata is 3-14.

Hollidaysburg will be the No. 2 seed in Class 5A behind top-seeded Central Mountain. The Lady Tigers have shown the ability to compete with good teams this season but while they have scored a lot of runs, they have also allowed a lot.

State College and Altoona are the only two Class 6A teams, and while Altoona is vastly improved this season, the Lady Lions lost both regular season games to State College by scores of 13-1 and 14-4.