High school softball: Desert Hills sends patient senior class out on top with 4A title
May 15, 2026, 5:11 PM | Updated: May 21, 2026, 10:47 pm
PROVO — After falling in back-to-back seasons in the 4A softball championship series, Desert Hills’ senior class finally reached the mountain top.
Lulu West scattered five hits with six strikeouts as the Thunder rolled up their first 4A championship in program history with a 4-2 win over Bear River on Saturday at BYU’s Gail Miller Field.
“All growing up, Lulu was second base or pitcher — and she plays that for us, too,” Desert Hills coach Heidi Taylor said of West. “But we talk about pitchers being athletes … and don’t just have to go to first every time.
“She’s athletic; she’s played basketball for three years. She’s just an athlete.”
Fellow senior Bailey Lee smacked two doubles for Desert Hills (31-3), and Riley Greene added a double and an RBI for a club that did all the scoring it would need with a three-run third inning to pull away for the victory.
Bri Gardiner pulled a pair back with a two-run homer in the top of the sixth for Bear River (26-7), which had won three of the last five 4A titles since the COVID-19 pandemic cancelled the spring championship season.
That included a 3-2 win over the Thunder a year ago, when Marley Tisdol plated Aubree Fry with the game-winning run in the bottom of the eighth inning to clinch the Bears’ state-record 12th championship since the Utah High School Activities Association sanctioned the sport in 1990.
This year, the heroics belonged to Desert Hills and a senior class seven deep led by UConn signees West and Greene who had longed waited for their turn.
The wait is over.
Game 1: West spins gem as Desert Hills takes early advantage
Lulu West didn’t have a pitch she would take back in Friday’s first game of Utah’s 4A high school softball championship series.
Well, maybe just one.
The Desert Hills senior who has signed with Connecticut allowed just one run on three hits with 14 strikeouts as the Thunder took the advantage with a 3-1 win over Bear River at BYU’s Gail Miller Field.
“I felt good, my team felt good, and we were just really hyped,” said West, a three-time first-team all-state player who started as a middle infielder. “We just came out and played our game.”
Her coach was a bit more overstated — with a catch.
“Lulu didn’t miss today. She was good,” Desert Hills coach Heidi Taylor said. “I’ll take back; she missed one pitch, and I’d bet that batter wants it back. But she was fantastic, against a potent lineup. There isn’t a batter you can relax on, and she did a great job.”
Riley Greene paced the Thunder’s offense, which will try to finish the job Saturday at 4:30 p.m. MT.
The senior who has also signed with Connecticut opened the scoring with an inside-the-park home run, finishing an extra-base hit down the left-field line that got lost in the corner to give Desert Hills (27-6) a 1-0 lead after the first inning.
If defending champion Bear River (30-4) wins the second game, a winner-take-all game 3 will immediately follow. The Thunder know that path well after the Bears won Game 3 in last year’s 4A championship series to clinch their state-record 12th championship in program history.
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“They know after taking it to three last year and losing the heartbreaker,” Taylor said. “But we did business today, we’ll have fun with the rest of the deal, and then we’ll be ready to focus for our game at 4 tomorrow.”
West echoed her coach about the importance of winning the first game of a best-of-three series.
“It’s huge,” she said. “It just shows that if we come out and play our game, we can do it. It gives us a lot of confidence going into tomorrow.”
Desert Hills will spend much of the rest of the day at Kearns, where the Thunder’s baseball team will play for a 4A state title against Region 9 rival Snow Canyon. It’ll be a deserved break, after the school’s baseball team filled up the stands behind home plate supporting softball in the morning game.
“I knew they were coming. But I didn’t know that they were going to be such a loud presence,” Taylor said. “Honestly, it probably made a huge difference.
“I know that it makes the girls happy to see the rest of the school cheering them on,” she added. “Desert Hills is pretty much a family; it’s just hard when we’re far from home. It was nice to have them here.”
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