July 4, 2025
By Alissa Noe
AURORA — It’s a rarity when a single player can serve as the deciding X-factor in a softball game across an entire inning, but in the Atlanta Vipers Gold's nine-inning, 10-9 win over Warrior Academy in the 14U Power Pool TV championship on Thursday, Dakota McDaniel was just the girl the Vipers needed.
First, McDaniel scored the go-ahead run in the top of the final inning after starting it at second base. Then she got the job done from the circle, where she brushed off two sacrifice bunts to start the bottom of the frame before shutting Warrior Academy down once and for all. She pitched 7.1 innings in all and gave up just one run at Aurora Sports Park.
Her game-winner nearly gave her coach, Josh Lynch, a heart attack. Warrior Academy gifted the Vipers with a throwing error from home plate.
“I'm rounding third,” McDaniel recounted. “I didn't stop running because I saw the throw down. I just peeked and just kept on running. The right fielder was right there, right behind the plate. (Lynch) was saying that I could have gotten the third out, but I was like, you know what? It's the end of the game. Let's just be crazy. Let's do something.”
Crazy or not, her theatrics gave the Vipers just the fuel they needed to finish the game — and the Power Pool bracket — strong. She jumped up and down after crossing home plate.
“I take that energy and excitement,” McDaniel said. “When I pitch, I'm very animated and pumped up. Doing that helps me go out there and have enough energy to shut them down right there.”
The victory boiled down to small snapshots in the later innings.
Warrior Academy’s Addison Schafer sprinted all the way home from first in the bottom of the sixth to break a 7-7 tie, and owed Juliana Carranza’s pop fly for that honor. Two innings earlier, Warrior Academy had forfeited a 7-2 lead by allowing four Viper runs.
The Vipers, not to be thwarted easily, tied the contest back up at 8-8 in the top of the seventh thanks to a series of base hits and an RBI from Sam Porter.
Atlanta's Kira Driggers kept the intrigue alive in the top of the eighth with a hard-hit ball to right field to bring Savanna Sowell home from second, but Warrior Academy was quick to tie things back up at 9-9 in Rylie Hicks’ leadoff at-bat, first on a passed ball and then off of an easy single. That's all the Vipers would allow.
An error at first spelled disaster for Warrior Academy in the top of the ninth to allow Daniel to score, and that was all she wrote. The Vipers stole the gold as they continue their journey in Colorado this week.
No win so far has been easy.
“We've been behind in every game that we have played this whole week, even in P5,” Lynch said. “And these girls, we've called them sandpaper all week. It's just the grit and the determination that they have with one another. They don't quit and they just keep going.
“Dakota is a firecracker, man. She is electric and she is fun to watch out there. I know we're in Colorado and she doesn't get the calls that she does back south, where we're from, because the ball just doesn't spin as well as it does back home. … It's something special to see when that kid gets in that circle. She just becomes a dog, and that's all it is.”
