Diamond Runners go 9-0 at Showcase by the Sea
SAN DIEGO — Diamond Runners 18U, a local travel softball team, concluded a successful summer season this past weekend with an excellent showing at the 12th annual Showcase by the Sea held at the Ocean Beach Athletic Complex.
The showcase was a round robin event with two sessions. The first ran from Aug. 2-Aug. 4 and featured 24 teams at the 18U level, with some coming from as far away as Eugene, Ore. to compete. The second session (Aug. 10-11) was smaller, featuring just nine teams.
In each case the teams played round robins with games running for seven-innings or 90 minutes — whichever went by faster.
Whether the field was big or small didn’t seem to matter much to the Brawley-based Diamond Runners, who vanquished each and every one of their foes to emerge as the only team to go undefeated across both sessions with a record of 9-0, outscoring their opponents 57-12 over that span.
The Runners’ success was driven by pristine pitching. Incoming Brawley Wildcat senior Lilly Martinez, was the chief author of this excellence, putting up a 6-0 record over 29 innings and registering 44 strikeouts. Backing her up was recent Southwest grad Sadriena Rodriguez who went 3-0 herself with 17 strikeouts over 17 innings. Each allowed just one earned run (though several more came through unearned).
Martinez was also a house at the plate, blasting no fewer than five home runs (one a grand slam) and racking up 13 RBI. Rodriguez added eight hits, including five doubles and a triple. Calexico High’s Sahara Norman had 10 knocks with seven (five doubles, two home runs) going for extra bases, totaling 11 RBI.
Other notable contributors included: Aly Tapia (13 hits), Haylee Garcia (nine hits, one home run, three doubles, eight RBI), Caryn Aguilar (eight hits, one double, seven RBI), Kamryn Rodriguez (seven hits, one RBI), Dana Alvarado (six hits, two RBI) and Marissa Pena (six hits, four RBI, six innings-pitched, five strikeouts).
As a showcase, the event — conceived and executed by Triple Crown Sports, a Colorado-based tourney management firm — was primarily an opportunity for college coaches to take a look at up-andcoming softball stars and didn’t feature a bracket portion or even a “winner” in the conventional sense. Nonetheless it was clear that the Diamond Runners were among the very best teams in attendance and some of their players certainly made an impression.
“Three or four of my (Class of) 2020s have a good outlook for college,” said Diamond Runners (and Brawley High School) head coach Kevin Kerns, “so hopefully [this will] help them get some scholarships. … That’s what we’re trying to do here.”
With their 9-0 run at Showcase by the Sea, the Diamond Runners finished the summer with a 16-2 overall record at such events, having gone 4-1 at “Zoom into June” in Hemet and 3-1 at the Best of the West tournament in Lake Elsinore.
They will resume team activities in October.