SAN ANTONIO — Facing elimination in its second game of the day, the Newman softball team went to extra innings before falling 2-1 in extra innings against Oklahoma Christian Thursday evening at the 2017 Heartland Conference Softball Championship at The Park at St. Mary's.

The Jets (17-35) still closed their season by winning eight of their final 14 games and set a program record by winning 10 conference games.

Newman got on the board in the bottom of the third. Bayley Horsch started the frame off by launching a ball off the top of the wall in left-center, ending up at third with a triple. The shot off the wall by Horsch was inches from being a home run, but it didn't matter one batter later, as Rachael Withers singled up the middle to score her.

Oklahoma Christian (32-22) answered in the next inning to tie it on an error, but Delaney Hiegert kept it a tie game with a slick play, scooping up an overthrow and gunning down the Eagle runner at the plate for the second out of the inning.

Hiegert kept it tied in the seventh as well, as the junior shot toward the line in left and made a sliding catch to strand a runner at third base and give the Jets a chance to walk off. The Newman defense stranded two more runners in the eighth, but a one-out triple by OC in the ninth threatened again.

On a fly ball to center, Newman's Taylor Mannis fired home to keep the runner frozen at third, but the spot-on throw clipped the bat still lying in front of the plate and skipped just past the catcher Horsch to the backstop. That allowed the go-ahead run to score, and the Eagles set the Jets down in order to seal the win.

Withers finished 2-for-4 at the plate, while Jensen Cromer and Kate Smith combined to allow just eight hits and the two unearned runs across nine innings.