GREENVILLE, N.C. – West Suburban punched its ticket to the Little League Softball World Series championship game Saturday with a 4-0 win over the Southwest Region, continuing a week of unbeaten play. 

The Mid-Atlantic Regional champion will face the Central Region at 3 p.m. Sunday with the title on the line.

“It means the world to me,” Reagan Bills said. “I’ve been watching since I was 5 and saying that I wanted to be in that exact game, and now that I get to go there, that’s crazy.”

It was a rematch of Thursday’s pitchers’ duel that West Suburban won 1-0, but this time the bats came alive.

The breakthrough came in the third inning when Mara Keefe beat out an infield single, advanced on a throwing error, and scored on a hard single to left by pitcher Bills. From there, Mid-Atlantic steadily added runs while Bills and a stellar defense kept Southwest off the board.

“I felt like it was a pretty good start to finish,” coach Lester Gaunt said. “From the first batter, Camilla (Gaunt) to open up with a double, I think was a pretty good statement.”

Bills worked out of jams all afternoon, finishing with clutch strikeouts in each inning and getting defensive gems behind her, including a sliding catch from right fielder Avery Baxter in the third.

“They’re awesome,” Bills said of her teammates. “Like, none of this would ever happen without them.”

Mid-Atlantic added to its lead in the fifth, starting with Leilah Schilling-Mansour’s RBI double to right. Keefe followed with an RBI infield single, and Sadie Divido added an RBI single to make it 3-0.

In the sixth, Kennedy Fees singled and came all the way around on a wild pitch and Mallory Bailor’s RBI single to right, pushing the lead to 4-0.

“This lineup, you never know,” Gaunt said. “We’ve had heroes from the top of the lineup to the bottom of the lineup come through with clutch, game-winning, game-ending hits. It’s never the same person.”

Southwest threatened in the bottom of the sixth, loading the bases with one out, but Bills got a strikeout to end the game.

“It wouldn’t be softball if we didn’t end it in a dramatic way,” Gaunt said.

Both Bills and Gaunt praised her connection with catcher Adalyn Hines as part of her success in the circle.

“I think she’s the best catcher here,” Gaunt said. “She’s the captain out there. She sees everything that’s going on, and you’d be hard pressed to find a better catcher at this age.”

Now, one game remains.

“I just want them to have fun, really,” Gaunt said. “At this point, obviously, a championship would be fantastic, but more importantly, I want them to enjoy this moment because it’s going to be gone in a flash. So no matter what they do, I’m going to press to them to enjoy it.”