For the first time ever, Minnesota State is the Division II softball champion after sweeping Angelo State in two games.

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That was largely thanks to the right arm of senior Coley Ries, who completed her senior season with an inhuman 41-3 record. In her two championship-series starts, she tossed a pair of complete games, surrendering just two runs while striking out 25 as the Mavericks won the two games by identical 5-1 tallies.

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In Division II softball, dominance looks like Coley Ries and the Minnesota State Mavericks.

The senior right-hander from Eagle Lake, Minnesota, near the Mavs’ Mankato campus, struck out 14 Angelo State hitters Monday to propel her team to its first NCAA national championship.

The 5-1 victory was Minnesota State’s second by that score in two days over Angelo State (60-7), which entered the championship tournament as the nation’s top-ranked squad.

But Ries, the national player of the year and the most outstanding in the tournament, was simply indomitable.

She tossed another three-hitter, and her 14 strikeouts Monday gave her a total of 25 in the two games against the Rambelles. That is, 60 percent of the outs Minnesota State needed to record to win the two games came on Ries strikeouts.

“Going into the game, I tried to think about the fact that we didn’t have the pressure, the pressure was more on them, being that was had kind of one game to give,” said Ries, who pitched all 35 innings in the tournament. “I just tried to stay really relaxed. I was confident in our offense that we were going to come out and score.

“I think my pitches were a lot of times doing the same thing they did yesterday. We had a game plan also going in that (assistant coach Kristle) Walcott worked on with how it went yesterday and how we should attack them today, and I think that was definitely key to some of the success as well.”

Minnesota State (64-7) took advantage of an error, a walk and a double by Ashley Thell to open the scoring in the third inning. The Mavericks struck for two more unearned runs in the fourth on two hits and two more infield errors by the Rambelles.

Ries was touched for a solo home run by Kenedy Urbany in the sixth inning. That closed the Rambelles to within 3-1. But in the Mavericks’ half of the sixth, they strung together four singles after two were out to suck the momentum from Angelo State. The decisive hit in that inning was Jess Meidl’s two-run single.

Nine of Minnesota State’s 10 runs in the two games were scored with two outs.

The championship is the first for coach Lori Meyer in her 33 seasons at Minnesota State.

“I knew in pregame watching (Coley) warm up that she was even sharper today than what she was yesterday with her pitches moving,” Meyer said. “I felt really good about that.

“And again, the scoring with two outs, with coming up with clutch hitting. And also putting the ball in play and making them have to make some plays. It was just a great team performance. It’s just how this team has responded all year.”

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Information provided courtesy of NCAA