South Snohomish pounds Utah 10-0 to advance to West Region title game

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — Sick or not, Makayla Miller has been the best pitcher at the 2015 Little League Softball West Region tournament.

Miller, battling flu-like symptoms since Monday, tossed her second no-hitter of the tournament as South Snohomish defeated Cedar City (Utah) Cedar American 10-0 in a four-inning, mercy-rule shortened game to advance to Friday’s championship contest.

“We didn’t come all this way and all these games to lose the next one,” manager Fred Miller said.

Miller (5-0, 0.50 ERA) struck out six and walked two in dominating a game that was suspended for 1 hour, 40 minutes by a weather delay for lightning and rain.

“Right when I saw the weather delay I was like, ‘This could be perfect,’” Washington manager Fred Miller said.

Makayla Miller, who has suffered from an illness since Monday when she ran a 103-degree fever, was nearly scratched from Thursday’s start but took some more medicine before the game and started for Washington for the fifth time.

“We don’t know what she has and we didn’t know if she was going to start,” Fred Miller said. “We got some medicine in her 5 or 10 minutes before the game.”

Miller pitched a 1-2-3 first inning, eased through the second despite allowing a one-out walk, and was in the hole when the umpire halted the game and removed the teams from the field.

Washington went to the cafeteria to have dinner but Makayla Miller went back to the team’s barracks and rested.

“The (weather delay) was huge,” Fred Miller said. “She went and laid down and the medicine started to kick in.”

“It took like 45 minutes for it to kick in so (the weather delay) helped,” said Makayla Miller, who also pitched a no-hitter in Washington’s tournament opener against Nevada.

Leading 9-0 in the fourth, Ashley Jacobson crushed a solo home run to end the game. She was 2-for-2 with two RBI.

Washington’s 11- and 12-year-old champions move on to play the Northern California-Hawaii winner at 6 p.m. Friday.