Steel Lake's 9-10 year-old softball all- stars did what they had to do -- and they had to do a lot, coming through the loser's bracket to win it all by beating Tahoma, 5-2, at the South County Ballpark Friday.

"I've been working with this group of girls 3-4 years and finding their best spots on the field," said manager Terome Fulmore.

These ladies' tourney opening defeat that sent them into the loser's bracket was a 6-1 loss to Tahoma. It was ugly, but Fulmore knew things could be different if some certain things were de-uglified.

"We made some unfortunate errors against Tahoma in that first game and we corrected them." He and his helped didn't need to do batting or pitching corrections so much as just pep the girls a little, or, underpep, in this case.

"They were overexcited in that first game," said Fulmore, who works with coach Chuck Woods.

Steel Lake started coming back the hard way, with a win over Bonney Lake, then Soundview, then Fife- Milton. Then they had to beat Tahoma twice in the championship.

Katie Jackson knocked a home run in the bottom of the first.

"It was my first home run all season and it came in the championship," said Jackson. Tahoma scored after that, but then Steel Lake scored again in the third, Kayla Quiroga singled in a run to make it 2-1. Jackson, in the next inning, followed up her first good at-bat with a RBI single, scoring Woods, who had drawn a walk.

Steel Lake scored two more on a couple walks from the Tahoma pitcher seeing her state qualifications for her team slipping away. The girl even needed a time out to recompose herself and dry those crying eyes.

Celine Woo, who pitched a complete game gem for Steel Lake, scored after her walk, going around all the bases on wild pitches.

These girls were confident they could beat this Tahoma team after that first loss.

"Tahoma had us 5-0 yesterday, and, against all odds, we came ,back," said Terhome.

On the pitching end of this game, Woo did experience some control problems, but she came out of it making Tahoma have to leave three on the bags in the second after three walks.

Here's a good reason why Woo could not let that bother her -- her team believed in her.

"She just blew it off," said the smallest member of team, Madeline Colson.

Woo wasn't worried either when she had those walks in innings two and three.

"I'm not worried," she said. "Because I know that everyone on my team works their butts off."

Jackson did a good job behind the plate, catching, not letting balls go by her, which is critical.

"She's an awesome catcher," said Woo.

And the whole team played good defense behind Woo.

Shelina Crowl, who hardly played, was enthusiastic as the rest, and cared for nothing more than this.

"Can I say something?," she politely asked after the game.

"I know we are close as a team and we all played together well in the last two weeks," said Crowl. "It wasn't just Celine. We did it as a team."

That makes perfect sense when the glowing face of Colson was saying to friends and teammates loudly, "We did it."

State starts at Sunset Park in Auburn July 15.