There were no horseshoes, four-leaf clovers or rabbit’s feet spotted on the Rocori bench Friday afternoon. But Lady Luck sure was wearing black and red.

The Spartans scored eight unearned runs to beat Byron 9-3 in the Class 3A softball final at the University of Minnesota.

It is the first state title for Rocori (20-5) which entered as the fifth seed but beat No. 4 Becker 2-1 in a 14-inning quarterfinal and upset top-seeded Mankato East 2-0 in the semis.

“You have to put the ball in play to win games, making them make mistakes putting the pressure on them and that’s what we did,” said Sophia Hess, who had two of the team’s eight hits.

Tied at 3 in the fifth, Rocori’s Jessica Boos singled to plate Jordyn Illies, who led off the inning by reaching on an error and taking second on a wild pitch. Boos scored two batters later on a throwing error.

Two more runs scored on a sixth-inning error as Rocori widened its lead.

Byron finished with five errors, four hits and struck out 12 times against Boos.

“Rocori played loose and I don’t think we did,” said coach Jacob Harmon.

An infield throwing error on a ground ball allowed two Rocori runners to score in the second and a dropped fly ball in the third made it 3-0 Spartans.

That lead did not last two outs.

Sixth-seeded Byron (17-7) got one back in the fourth with an RBI ground-rule double by Kaydence Fjerstad before Ella Brennan lined a two-run single to score two more Bears.

“We bounced back nice, but then it kind of snowballed on us and got of hand,” Harmon said. “Not all their hits were great hits. A lot of bloopers that fell in, just getting a piece of the changeup or this or that. Those balls didn’t fall for us.”

With the game tied, Boos said the Spartans kept their poise.

“It was a 0-0 game from there and we just knew what we had to do, and we got runners, we kept hitting the ball … we strung them together.”