“It’s crazy. Everyone’s so confident,” Rosemount senior pitcher Jessa Snippes, a University of Minnesota commit, said. “We know we have each other’s backs and we can rely on each other. There’s not really any doubt. Even if we get down, we know we can always come back. It’s awesome to have a team like that.”

Rosemount entered the day averaging 12.5 runs per game. It struggled to square up solid contact early on. An inward breeze didn’t help, either.

Dohse was painting the edges of the zone to keep Rosemount from getting anything too juicy to hit.

Irish head coach Tiffany Rose urged her team to stay patient.

That formula worked to overcome a 7-3 deficit after one inning Saturday in the second game of a doubleheader against Eagan. Rosemount won 17-9.

“I think our girls did a very good job waiting for strikes. I thought we had good pitch selection today,” Rose said. “I think that’s what it came down to, wearing [Dohse] down a little bit and waiting for some good pitches we could send to the outfield.”

Rosemount also wore down the opposing defense, which Hopkins head coach Carl Yancy said is inexperienced at four positions.

Multiple fielding errors plagued Hopkins in the deciding fifth inning where Rosemount also recorded six hits, three walks and one hit batter. Sixteen batters came to the plate.

Only one hit in the rally was an extra-base hit, a double by senior first baseman Paige Zender.

“Our thing is that this is the epitome of just making the routine play and keeping it a ball game,” Yancy said. “When things start going downhill, not to panic and do those kind of things. Rosemount’s a great ball club; they knew that coming in. Number one ranked team in the state, all the hype’s been there. Seven D-I athletes on their roster.”

Snippes scattered three hits and struck out five. She overcame a lead-off walk in the fifth inning by retiring Hopkins’ first through third hitters in order to keep the deficit from swelling.

This was Hopkins’ first meeting with Rosemount since 2019. The Royals want to be challenged as they seek to return to the Class 4A state tournament after a fourth-place finish in 2022.

Yancy is confident in his team’s ability to shake this one off. They need only to look back to Monday when they thumped a strong Maple Grove team, 7-1.

“I think one of my captains said it best today ‘We played absolutely flawless yesterday against Maple Grove.’ That’s a really good team. I’ve scheduled Rosemount, Maple Grove, White Bear Lake, we play with Eden Prairie in our conference, we play with St. Michael-Albertville in our conference… “I made it that way on purpose because I know how good we can be and how much talent we have. We just need to perform. One inning is an indicator of what you have to do in a nutshell.”

Rosemount is looking to make it to back state after earning the No. 1 ranking in the final Class 4A coaches poll in 2022, only to fall short in the section final. The Irish won the 4A state title in 2021.

“We have even talked about it as a group, we just want to have good team chemistry and we want to kind of bring back some spark we had a couple years ago and have some different thoughts about what that looks like and what it can be,” Rose said. “A lot of that is how can we stay focused on team things and all of us working toward the same goal. Not individual stuff, because the individual stuff is hard because we have a lot of great girls. Not everyone’s going to get the awards that they want to get. So it’s kind of on the back burner and it’s more about what can the team do because we get to celebrate those exciting things together.”