Ardmore's Sydney Hall delivers a pitch to the plate in a game earlier this season. Hall and the Tigers are one of five local teams participating in the North Regional softball tournament, which begins Thursday morning at the Huntsville Sportsplex.

With the regular season and area tournaments now over, five local softball teams are still alive in a quest for an elusive state champion. The next hurdle to clear in the path to a title is the North Regional tournament, which begins Thursday at the Huntsville Sportsplex.

Ardmore, Athens Bible, Athens High, Elkmont and West Limestone are all competing in their respective classifications after finishing in the top two of their area tournaments last week. Ardmore, Athens Bible and Elkmont advanced as area champions while Athens High and West Limestone were runner-ups.

Ardmore will be the first local team to get going in the double-elimination regional Thursday, as the Tigers pay Douglas in the Class 5A regional at 9 a.m. Athens Bible will face Tharptown in the 1A regional at 10:30 a.m., while Athens High takes on Fort Payne in the 6A regional at 10:30 a.m. Each team’s second game time and opponent will be determined by if they win or lose their first game.

Elkmont and West Limestone don’t start their respective regionals until Friday, with the Red Devils facing off against New Hope in the 3A regional at noon and the Wildcats taking on North Jackson in the 4A regional at 3:30 p.m.

Ardmore coach Stephen Baugh said his team has played a difficult schedule full of top tournaments this season to prepare them for just this tournament. Baugh said playing that tough schedule was necessary due to the weakness of the area Ardmore plays in. The Tigers won all three games in its area tournament by 15-0 scores.

“We got the area tournament out of the way early to hopefully get that out of our system and keep rolling,” Baugh said. “The weekend before, we were at the Cullman tournament and played some pretty good teams in Gardendale, Hartselle and Austin. That’s why we went to that tournament, was to prepare us for this week. All season we have played good tournaments and seen good teams to prepare us for what we’re going to see Thursday and Friday.”

Ardmore advanced to the Class 5A state tournament last season, finishing in fourth place. But Baugh said he warned his players that unless they finish in the top two at the regional tournament, there will be no chance to better that state tournament result.

“I told our players yesterday that our focus is on what we’re going to do today to get better and prepare for one team, and that’s Douglas,” Baugh said. “You can’t listen to the peanut gallery, because they’ll talk about things that haven’t happened yet. Our job is to focus on what’s ahead of us and take one game at a time.”

Another coach preaching that mantra is Elkmont coach Mary Jane Hobbs. The Red Devils are coming off a Class 3A, Area 15 championship, in which they defeated top seed East Lawrence 3-1 in the tournament championship game.

“We played real well last Thursday and Friday,” Hobbs said. “Things really started clicking together, and we just continued to push along and never look back. They set goals earlier in the week of where they wanted to be, and they kept pushing until they got there.”

Hobbs said for Elkmont to perform well in the regional tournament, the Red Devils will have to take advantage of their opportunities.

“We don’t look past any game to the next,” Hobbs said. “We take it one at-bat at a time, one defensive play at a time, and one game at a time. We’ve just got to continue with our bats and playing hard defense all the way through. We can’t look past any of our opportunities, no matter where they may come, whether that be on offense or defense.”