Staff photo / Preston Byers Canfield’s Jordan Greenhaw hugs Lydia Handel (5) as their teammates celebrate winning the Little League softball state championship on Monday in Boardman.

BOARDMAN — Canfield avenged an earlier loss to Wheelersburg not once, but twice on Monday en route to a come-from-behind Little League 12U softball state championship victory.

Canfield, which needed to beat Wheelersburg twice Monday to advance to the regional tournament, did just that, winning the first game 6-3 before pulling off a late comeback to win the state crown 6-4.

“Today was great,” Canfield manager Lou Zorella said. “The first game, they played well, we just jumped on them early and were able to hold that first game. And that was our goal, get through that first game, and then, if we can get that, come back to the second game and try to jump on them early, which we didn’t.

“But we just weathered the storm. And then we jumped on them for five in the sixth inning. It’s just what our team is made of. We don’t give in.”

Over the weekend, Canfield, the Ohio District 2 champion, suffered its first loss of the state tournament in a 3-0 defeat at the hands of Wheelersburg. Canfield responded with an 11-1 shellacking of Tallmadge on Sunday to earn at least one rematch vs. Wheelersburg the following day.

Unlike Game 2 on Monday, Canfield, which swung and connected on most first pitches early, got off to a quick start in Game 1, jumping out to a 3-0 lead in the first inning.

Although Wheelersburg did pull within two in the fourth and scored a pair of runs in the dying moments, an explosive top of the sixth for Canfield gave it enough cushion to win 6-3 and force a final game between the two teams later in the day.

“These girls, I’ve coached them for a long time. They rarely ever get nervous,” Canfield coach Ron Griswold said after Game 1. “They get serious and they get intense, but they just don’t get nervous. They’ve been playing together for a long time. They know what they need to do, and they’re very confident in their abilities.”

Early on in the decider, neither team could take advantage, and through the first two-and-half innings, the game remained scoreless. However, Wheelersburg soon took control.

After a leadoff fly out, Shalyn Hall drew a walk from Canfield starter Kylee Kritz before Reese Stang singled to left field and Ava Kate Chamberlin drew another walk to load the bases. Brynlee Greenhill then drove in the first run of the game with a sacrifice fly to right field.

Canfield decided to intentionally walk Emmalynn Chidsey, who had a pair of doubles and drove in two runs a few hours earlier, but Stella Pierron proved just as effective and gave Wheelersburg a 2-0 lead with a single up the middle.

Following a fruitless inning for both teams at the plate, Canfield finally managed to get on the scoreboard in the top of the fifth.

Hailey Reigrut earned a walk to lead off the inning and was quickly joined on the basepaths by Mia Tieche, who doubled to right field to give Canfield two runners in scoring position. Only one would ultimately cross home plate, though, as a miscommunication on the basepaths wasted a potential Kate Broderick sacrifice fly before a Kylee Kritz groundout scored Reigrut. Tieche was thrown out after Reigrut scored while trying to take third base.

In the circle, Kritz, who pitched all 12 innings Monday, got Canfield through the bottom of the fifth unscathed, keeping the score at 2-1 heading into the final inning.

“The big thing is we tell her just try to throw strikes, because really, she may not be overpowering to strike them out, but we wanted to put it in play so we can make plays,” Zorella said of Kritz. “She did well, though, like I said, I think [it’s been] five or six days in a row pitching. She was probably getting tired, but she knew we were riding her.”

Much like it had in the first game of the day, Canfield’s offense took over in the sixth.

Lydia Handel led off by reaching first after Wheelersburg’s shortstop mishandled the groundball, and she quickly found herself at second on a passed ball.

Cam Griswold moved Handel to third and, with Wheelersburg’s paying its attention to the tying run, reached an unoccupied second base on a well-placed bunt. Savina Knepper kept the momentum going with a single through the left side of the infield, which scored Handel and tied the game at two runs apiece.

The string of hits continued with a Leah Griswold bunt, which Wheelersburg held onto near home plate but loaded the bases, but Canfield then nearly made a critical, state title-losing error.

On a routine pop fly to second base, Cam Griswold was sent home and easily thrown out at the plate for the second out of the inning.

“Yeah, we had some baserunning errors,” Zorella said. “But we were able to overcome it. We were trying to be aggressive. We wanted them to make some throws, keep them under pressure.”

Fortunately for Canfield, the misstep quickly proved insignificant; Bethy Zorella singled to re-load the bases before Jordan Greenhaw drove in the go-ahead run, as the home-plate umpire ruled that the catcher had not been on the plate for the forceout and Knepper had slid under the tag.

Then, in the biggest play of the game, McKayla Lang hit a high, deep ball to right field, which fell to the grass just past an outstretched Wheelersburg’s glove and allowed the three Canfield runners on base to score and extend the lead to four.

“Their pitcher’s good. I mean, she throws good,” Lou Zorella said of Wheelersburg starter Pierron. “But we got hitters. We just needed to see her a couple more times, and we were going to get to her. We hit one through 12. As you can see, in that fifth I think, we started with our seventh or eighth batter, and we got to the top of the order and they just took over.”

In the bottom of the sixth, similarly to Game 1 of the final, Wheelersburg put up a fight, scoring two runs and putting increasingly more pressure on Kritz.

But like earlier, the comeback fell well short, and with one final fly ball to Greenhaw, Canfield had secured its state title.

The win earns Canfield a spot in the Little League Central Region tournament, which begins Sunday, July 20 in Whitestown, Ind.

Canfield, the Ohio representative, will play Illinois on Sunday at 4 p.m. The game will be broadcast on ESPN+.