It had been over a decade since Taylor had won a playoff game.

The Mustangs took a step last year, making it to the playoffs and putting up a strong fight against George Ranch, but this year’s group had bigger goals. This year, the Mustangs are focused on advancing and making a run.

Taylor took its first step in doing that on Wednesday, breaking a 13-year drought with no playoff wins by beating Ridge Point 7-0 in the first game of a three-game bi-district series, gaining a huge advantage over the Panthers.

“We want this so badly,” said senior pitcher Ari Hughes,” We want to get this win and go to the next round. We got the experience last year of the playoffs but we want to go further this year. It’s given us a lot of drive and motivation, we want to push forward and go to area.”

It only took one at bat for the Mustangs to settle their nerves, as leadoff hitter Kaelyn Lerma stepped to the plate and slammed a solo home run to start the game. Even if there were any doubts before that, it quelled them and gave the rest of the Taylor team the belief that they could compete with anyone.

“It was a big exhale for everyone in the dugout,” said Taylor head coach Billie Powell. “When you have somebody like Kaelyn at the top of the lineup like that it’s so impactful and this is what she’s done for us all season. But it allowed us to relax a little bit and it gave the dugout that feeling that they knew they could do this. It was a big boost right when we needed it.”

Taylor settled in and started adding on in the third inning. Bethany Fan plated the Mustangs second run on a sacrifice grounder and Sophia Ybanez hit a double that brought another home. Hughes hit an RBI single and Alyssa Sharock made it 5-0 after three inning by driving in another run on a fielders choice. Taylor added two more in the seventh, one on a Katelyn Wentzler double and another on a Taylor Gray double as the Mustangs went on to close out the game in strong fashion.

“We just sat and waited on pitches that missed, when they did we took advantage of it,” Lerma said. “Ridge Point has a good pitcher so we had to pick and choose when to get aggressive and attack only our pitches. That was a big part of our success today, we didn’t strike out once and we put balls in play.”

Taylor’s offense was big with 13 hits in the game, but Hughes was equally as impressive, pitching a complete game and not allowing a run on seven hits while striking out six. Ridge Point got runners in scoring position in three different innings, but each time Hughes stepped up and kept the Panthers from getting on the scoreboard.

“Nothing bothers her,” Powell said. “Ari thinks every single time she’s up there no matter who she’s facing, no matter the situation, that she is going to win that battle. It’s a special mentality, we could be up five runs or down five runs and nothing changes for her. Ari just goes out and executes every single pitch the same way, it’s special.”

Game two of the series will be played at Jordan 6 p.m. Friday. Taylor just needs one more game to make history and the Mustangs aren’t looking to slow down.

“We can still be better,” Lerma said. “We’re going to enjoy this but we are going to be ready. We have to be better at moving runners on Friday and we have to figure out how to produce every time we have someone on base. Ridge Point isn’t going to go down quietly so we have to make sure we out produce them.”