Lady Jags slug it out over SFIS
This season’s Capital team showing greater resilience, ability to rally
Ayear ago, a 3-0 deficit was the sign of a short day for the Capital Lady Jaguars. On Tuesday, they showed that they can kick old habits.
The Santa Fe Indian School Lady Braves posted three runs in the opening frame of a nondistrict softball game between the two teams, and it appeared Capital was about to repeat last year’s 12-0 loss to the Lady Braves. Only, a potential short day grew longer as the Lady Jaguars rallied not once, but twice to pull out an 8-6 win at the Santa Fe Indian School Athletic Complex.
The rally was antithetical of what Capital (6-2) did last year when facing an early deficit — an encouraging sign for a program that has its eyes on making the state tournament for the first time in 13 years. To do it against an SFIS team that was undefeated coming into the game and coming off a big win over Albuquerque Hope Christian in the Lady Braves Tournament over the weekend was even better.
“I told the girls afterward that this is the first game since we’ve been around that we’ve been down twice but we came back, battled and took the lead,” said Sig Rivera, Capital’s third-year head coach. “Last year, we would have lose the game in five innings probably.”
There was no probably, coach. Capital’s loss to the Lady Braves in 2017 ended in five.
This one went the distance thanks to some timely adjustments by the Lady Jaguars at the plate and equally untimely errors by the Lady Braves. Three errors came in the third inning as Capital scored thrice to tie the score at 3-all. Two came on one play, as Caitlyn Cruz sailed Arianna Almeida’s grounder to the shortstop into right field, then Lady Braves right fielder Alexis Garcia airmailed her throw of the errant ball past third base, which allowed JoJo Bowannie to score from third and cut the SFIS lead to 3-2.
With Almeida at third with two outs, Lady Braves starting pitcher Ariana Marcotte bobbled Adaline Carrasco’s chopper to the left of the pitching circle for another error and Almeida raced in with the tying run.
“I think it’s in the way that you take [the situation],” Almeida said, reflecting back on last year. “If you get down on yourself, then your whole team gets down. You have to keep pushing it and don’t get down. Don’t use it as something to bring you down, but use it to pick yourself up.”
So, the heads in the Capital dugout didn’t stay down when SFIS responded with a run in the bottom of the third, courtesy of consecutive infield hits, an error and a groundout by Raven Alcott that scored Lauren Bekise for a 4-3 edge. Instead, the Lady Jaguars took advantage of opportunity once again.
After Cruz sailed Deanza Booker’s grounder over first base to start the fourth, Bekise was uncertain which base to throw to on Sylvia Pincheira’s grounder
and Capital had runners at first and second with no outs. SFIS (5-1) executed a force out of Booker at third on an Emma George grounder to Marcotte, but George and Pincheira stole second and third, respectively. Pincheira scored on Yamile Cota’s groundout to second base, then Bowannie had an RBI single and Almeida an RBI double for a 6-4 lead.
“I think we had nine throwing errors in the third and the fourth inning,” SFIS head coach Oliver Torres said. “It’s hard to win ball games with one error in baseball and softball, but if you make nine throwing errors, it’s hard to overcome.”
Capital benefited from two more Lady Braves errors in the fifth to score twice for an 8-4 lead, but the Lady Braves caught a break by finally retiring Bowannie, who was 3-for-3 with two RBIs and a run by that point, via strikeout with runners on second and third. Bowannie has been the hottest hitter for the Lady Jaguars, and saw her batting average rise from .632 to .667 while upping her RBI total to 19.
“I have to say it’s a lot of confidence,” Bowannie said of her start. “You have to believe in yourself. I think that was our issue [as a team] last year; we’d get so nervous and so down, we’d freak out.”
The freakout never came, even as SFIS scored a run in the fifth and another in the seventh. After allowing four hits in the opening frame, Almeida surrendered just seven over the next six while striking out six batters in that span.
“I think I just needed to warm up and get my confidence up,” Almeida said. “I knew that my team was down and I needed to throw strikes and to help them out.”
It’s a new “down, but not out” attitude that might be a sign of maturity for the Lady Jaguars.