The Bremen High School softball team’s bats picked up right where they left off from their Game 2 win and into the Lady Blue Devils’ decisive Game 3 showdown with Calhoun in the second round of the Class AA state playoffs on Thursday night, which proved to be more than enough support for hurler Jacquelyn Hightower.

Hightower was in control from start to finish in Bremen’s 5-0 victory over the top-seeded Lady Yellow Jackets (25-12), helping send her squad to the elite eight in Columbus next week.

“After facing Summer [Wallace], they just did not make any adjustments to Jacquelyn. She was stellar. She hit every spot. They hit a couple of pitches, but they had opportunities to do something and just couldn’t make it happen,” Bremen coach Amy Pointer said. “Probably the closest they came was the very last at-bat with a little girl that hit one deep to left field and Chelsey [Stillwell] was literally on the fence and caught it and that was the third out to end the ball game.”

Third-seeded Bremen (23-7) — which scored 13 runs in an elimination game on Wednesday night to force a third game — scored two runs in the first inning and three in the second to go up 5-0 early against Calhoun on Thursday.

Pointer said it was a total team effort in sending the team to Columbus for the first time in her eight years in charge of the Bremen program.

“They all played well. There wasn’t a kid out there that didn’t do her part. They all played well. We played through some injuries. Maddie [Gregory] has a hurt knee and Korra [Jaglinski] got hit on Wednesday night and her wrist is hurting a little bit. But they refused to be pulled out of the game,” Pointer said.

Of course, Pointer won a state championship the last time she was in Columbus, only this was as a player at Bremen under current Carrollton coach Lisa Phillips. She said it’ll be somewhat of a surreal feeling to go back now as a coach.

“Lisa Phillips came to Bremen when I was a sophomore in 1994, and she took us to state three times. The first two years we placed fourth. And what was cool, that was when the Olympic Stadium was built. The first game that was actually held in that complex was in the fall of 1995 and we were the first game on that field,” Pointer said. “The next year, we came back and we won it. So we went 30-0, perfect, my senior year. It’ll be cool to go back and take a group of kids and coach them. So it’s just pretty awesome.”

The Lady Blue Devils open the double-elimination round of eight on Thursday against Jeff Davis (23-13).