SOU (44-6 overall) and OIT (41-7) both finished 23-4 in CCC play. The Owls won the tiebreaker by taking two of three head-to-head conference matchups, giving them the No. 1 seed and hosting rights for next week's CCC Tournament. (Al Case / Ashland Daily)

LA GRANDE — For the first time in four years, the Southern Oregon University softball team staked a claim to the Cascade Conference regular-season championship. The Raiders didn’t get it to themselves, but a clutch home run off the bat of senior center fielder Sarah Kerling helped them earn a share at Peggy Anderson Field.

After dropping Game 1 of their series against No. 13 Eastern Oregon on Friday — a 9-7, 15-inning marathon — the top-ranked Raiders started Saturday morning by completing a 5-4 Game 2 loss that was suspended by darkness during the fifth inning a night earlier. Half an hour after that contest concluded, Oregon Tech finished off a sweep at College of Idaho to earn its share of the title.

That meant SOU and EOU entered Game 3 with a co-championship on the line, and the Raiders turned their weekend around by taking it 6-5. Tied 4-4 in the top of the sixth inning, Brooke Nordahl set the table with a leadoff single and Kerling stepped up two batters later to pull her first home run of the season over the fence in right field.

The Raiders also claimed the non-conference-counting Game 4, 7-5, behind two Ari Williams home runs — a game-tying solo shot in the third, and a two-run blast in the fifth that broke a 5-5 deadlock.

SOU (44-6) and OIT (41-7) both finished 23-4 in CCC play. The Owls won the tiebreaker by taking two of three head-to-head conference matchups, giving them the No. 1 seed and hosting rights for next week’s CCC Tournament. As the No. 2 seed, the Raiders will open in the double-elimination bracket at 4:30 p.m. next Friday against No. 3 seed EOU or No. 6 seed Carroll (Mont.).

EOU (28-9) finished a game of the Raiders and Owls at 22-5, though they won four of six CCC counters against the co-champs.

The Mountaineers kept their title hopes alive by hanging on for the Game 2 win after sleeping on a 5-3 lead. SOU pitcher Ayla Davies kept them on five runs with two perfect innings in relief, and Kennedy Kila cut the deficit to one with an RBI double in the seventh before she was stranded at third.

In the must-win Game 3, SOU’s Hailey Seva launched the first of her two homers on the day to the opposite field in the third inning, also plating Kailer Fulton to give the Raiders a 2-1 lead. EOU reclaimed it with two solo shots in the fourth, but in the fifth the Raiders got back-to-back RBI hits from Sammie Pemberton and Vanessa Lang to go up 5-4. EOU tied it with a run in the fifth before Kerling’s blast in the sixth, and Davies hung on for a complete-game victory that salvaged the trip.

Seva hit a three-run homer in the series finale to cap a monster weekend. The senior finished 10-for-18 with eight RBIs after being named the CCC Player of the Week on Monday. She raised her batting average from .288 to .378 over her last seven appearances of the regular season.

The CCC title is SOU’s eighth of the regular-season variety and fifth under head coach Jessica Pistole since 2016.

OIT has won at least a share of the championship four years in a row.