SHIPPENSBURG, Pa. -- One inning, one two-out rally, one shattered goal -- and it left the Latrobe softball team with one familiar feeling.

For the second consecutive season, Latrobe reached the PIAA Class AAAA title game and again stumbled on the state's largest softball stage.

Scoring all its runs on a two-out rally in the sixth inning, Hatboro-Horsham (25-2) earned a 3-0 victory against Latrobe (22-3) yesterday at Shippensburg University.

The sixth started innocuously enough, with Latrobe pitcher Alexa Bryson facing a two-out situation with a runner on second. But a base hit past diving Latrobe shortstop Emily Fenton skidded into the outfield. Wildcats coach Bob Kovalcin felt the runner at second, Megan Kelly, made contact with Fenton as she tried to get to the grounder. He argued with the umpire to no avail.

"The umpire said there was no contact," Kovalcin said. "We thought there was. But, after that, they hit the ball."

From there, the Hatters got an RBI single from catcher Jessie James and an RBI triple from Rachel Gieringer.

Just like that, it was 3-0.

All that seemed to shock Latrobe because Bryson had not allowed a run in 56 previous postseason innings.

Some could say Latrobe ran itself out of its best opportunity. In the fourth, the Wildcats had bases loaded and no one out. Meghan Kozusko hit a ball to shallow left where Kelly, the Hatters' left fielder, made a spectacular diving catch, sprung to her feet, hit her cutoff man (third baseman Gieringer), who then whirled and nailed Lauren Taylor, who had tried to score after tagging up from third.

"We took a chance right there, and I thought it was a time to take a chance," Kovalcin said. "She makes a great catch, and then is on her knees and has to come up and make a throw and then they need to get a perfect relay throw. They did all of that."

Hatboro-Horsham also got a tremendous performance from pitcher Amanda Sadowl, who tossed a three-hitter with five strikeouts. Sadowl acknowledged some of her motivation stemmed from the pregame scuttlebutt about Bryson's seeming invincibility.

"I did hear a lot about her, especially after our semifinal win," Sadowl said of Bryson. "I think we were all out here trying to prove that we could do it."