Oaks Christian keeps faith, rallies past Westlake
The Oaks Christian softball team remained unbeaten in Marmonte League play, erasing a five-run deficit on its way to a 7-5 win over visiting crosstown rival Westlake.
The win marked their 35th-straight in league, dating to a 2021 loss vs. Westlake.
In the first, it looked like the Warriors (9-5, 2-3) were set to topple the Lions (13-2, 5-0) again. Their first six hitters all reached base with the first five scoring, resulting in a pitching change before Oaks could record an out.
Junior Paityn Lavin pitched out of the first inning jam with the Lions trailing by five. She went on to to throw seven innings of shutout relief, striking out four but pitching to weak contact all afternoon.
“That’s Peyton,” Oaks Christian coach Cheyenne Cole said. “You know, when she’s on and she has that changeup working, that drop ball working, she’s really effective. And, again, she doesn’t need to be a big strikeout pitcher. She can get girls to mis-hit a ball. She’s going to let her defense work behind her.
Oaks Christian played strong defense behind Lavin in the win, despite having multiple players out of position because of injuries.
“We take pride in ourselves on what we prepare for and how much we practice on those situations,” Cole said. “We have a lot of talent. I mean, sometimes our infield is better, sometimes our outfield is better. It’s a good problem to have. We have athletes everywhere. We have outfielders who can play infield, infielders who can play outfield. It was tough almost at one time finding everybody a spot in the field because there were just so many good players.”
Sophomore Gia Otani had a big day to lead the offense. She went 4 for 4, including a tying, opposite-field homer, with four RBIs.
A third-inning single by Otani knocked in the second run for Oaks Christian, and came after fouling multiple two-strike pitches. Senior Lily Knox drove in the first run on a sacrifice fly to deep left center after also fouling multiple two-strike offerings.
“We work on that a lot — our two-strike approach,” Cole said. “When we’re hitting pop-ups and stuff, that’s not what we want to do. We know what we’re doing when we have two strikes. I think that’s what you saw today, is that they did a really good job when they had two strikes. Probably, most of our runs scored came off two-strike counts.”
The top three hitters in the lineup — Ilove’a Brittingham (2 for 4, double), Terrianna Kelley (2 for 4, HR), Rylee McCoy (3 for 3, HBP) each scored twice in the win.
Westlake had a run each from Samy Gallegos (2 for 4, double), Amanda Baldwin, Sydney Katz, Mia Morera and Olivia Ziebell-White.
The win was the 10th straight for Oaks Christian, and marked the largest deficit they’ve overcome this season.
“Today I was really proud of how they didn’t hit the panic button, because they could have been like, ‘Oh, my gosh. I’m not scoring,’ ” Cole said. “We try to remind them, ‘Hey, one game at a time. We’re not looking ahead.’ Anybody can beat anybody on any given day, and, you know, teams have proven that. So, I tell them you can’t take anybody in this league lightly because everybody can come out and show you up one day.
In other games: Newbury Park 2, Thousand Oaks 1; West Branch 15, Castaic 2; and Saugus 7, Canyon Country 0.