Senior Celina Johns ripped a two-out RBI single that proved to be the game-winning hit Wednesday afternoon, as the host Rams ended Cibola’s impressive 33-game winning streak.

Johns’ hit scored Julie Santillanes, who had drawn a walk off Cougars ace Missy Martinez, to give the Rams a 3-2 lead and pitcher Stacy Caldwell kept the Cougars (25-1, 8-1 in 1-5A) off the scoreboard in the seventh.

“I was so nervous but I was so confident and stuff,” Johns said. “I was working on my change-ups because I knew she was going to be throwing me that … I kept in there and I was like, ‘I need to get this run.’” She did and the fifth-ranked Rams (15-10, 6-3) will head to Farmington next week for the state tournament on a winning note and with added confidence.

“It was all about pride,” Johns said. “We had nothing to lose and they had everything to lose. And we really wanted this win right before we go to state.”

The Cougars, last year’s Class 5A champions and top-ranked team all of 2008, scored in its first at-bats, on a single by Valerie Swedberg, a sacrifice and a single by Latainna Eltsosie.

The Rams came back to tie the game in the bottom of the second.

Shannon Garcia swatted a double to right and scored one out later on a single by Santillanes.

The Rams took a 2-1 lead in the fourth on a double by Santillanes and a single to right by Caldwell.

Cibola knotted the game in the sixth when Mary Sandoval walked, went to second on a sacrifice and plated on single by Martinez.

When Santillanes worked Martinez for a walk to start the bottom of the seventh, the stage was set for a home-field win, although Swedberg laced a one-out double to left to give the Cougars hope, and Eltsosie walked, after Tia Bunch lined out to Caldwell in the circle, to make things interesting.

“Stacy did a phenomenal job,” coach Paul Kohman said, after she had limited the Cougars to just five hits.

“This was definitely a good way to end district,” Johns concluded.

Kohman said it was his team’s best game of the season and helped in the confidence department because his team had lost by the same score at Cibola 15 days earlier, when the No. 1 Cougars capitalized on three Rams errors in the seventh to grab the win.

This time, the Rams played flawlessly in the field, with shortstop Shelby Pendley making a few tough plays on wind-blown pop-ups into short left field.

“If you hit fat pitches you can succeed,” he summed up the victory. “The biggest thing is we had an umpire today that wasn’t (calling strikes at) the shoulders. I think that probably helped as much as anything and our kids did a good job not having to chase that, plus we didn’t have to deal with pitches six, eight inches off the plate that we had to swing at n that makes a huge difference. He did a great job n and our kids did a great job.”

Following the game, the team’s quartet of seniors n Santillanes, Johns, Caldwell and Cassie Grill, plus team manager Kirsten Ketchum n were saluted and handed flower bouquets.

“We’ve got a lot of youth on this team,” Kohman said, happy with the way his team will look in 2009.

“The problem is, I know we’re going to have to play them a couple more times,” Kohman predicted, referring to the double-elimination state tournament. “I want to play them a couple more. Our kids are going to have to have more fight, more heart, than they showed this game.”

After the way his team played Thursday, Kohman knew his team could contend for a state title, something it won in 2003.

“This is the best way I can think of to end our regular season, because Cibola is a very good team — there’s no question about it,” he said. “I know that we have talent. I’ve told them from the third, fourth week of practice that this is one of the best teams we have had at this school.

“At times they don’t believe it.”

Bunts: The Rams will learn their seed for the state tournament Sunday. The four teams ahead of the Rams in the latest coaches association poll, Cibola, Carlsbad, Sandia and La Cueva, all have better records than the Rams, who should expect no better than the 5. District 3-5A champion Las Cruces (14-10) could slip ahead of the Rams with its district laurels, relegating the Rams, the 1-5A runner-up, to 6. No matter what their seed, the Rams begin the state tournament Thursday at 10 a.m. at Ricketts Park in Farmington.