To put a slight spin on an old sports adage, defense didn’t win Hopkins the Class 3A, Section 6 softball championship Thursday in Richfield. But it sure did set the tone.

Needing a victory to force a decisive Game 2 with No. 2 seed Wayzata, the top-seeded Royals were down and severely close to being out.

Ahead 1-0 in the fifth inning, the Trojans loaded the bases with nobody out. Hopkins pitcher Morgan Nybo got the next batter to pop out, but a single to right by Meg DuPuis set off a collective groan from the Royals’ cheering section.

What happened next extracted wild cheers from the same group.

One run scored on the play, but the remaining two runners put into scoring position were caught in separate rundowns.

“Just a great display of defense,” Hopkins coach Anne Campbell said. “And I think we relaxed a little bit after that.”

The plays all but killed any momentum Wayzata had gained and also woke up the Royals’ bats. Hopkins had three of its four hits in the game in the bottom of the sixth. Allison Schaefer’s rope double to left field on a 3-1 count scored the go-ahead run of the 3-2 victory.

The Royals then ran away with things in Game 2, winning 9-2 after jumping to a 3-0 lead in the top of the first.

“We came together as a team just in time,” said Shaefer, whose clutch hitting continued with two first-inning RBI. “It was wonderful.”

Both teams used the same pitchers for all 14 innings. Wayzata’s Jessica Williams finished with 11 strikeouts while Nybo fanned 10 batters.

The plays behind her, though, stuck out and helped stamp the team’s seventh ticket to the state tournament and third trip in four years.

“There’s great tradition and history with this program,” Campbell said. “And we just raised it a notch.”