Inland teams have history of walk-off wins
The Roosevelt and Cajon softball teams won CIF Southern Section titles in thrilling fashion last week.
Roosevelt claimed the Division 1 championship when it scored four runs in the bottom of the seventh inning to stun Los Alamitos. The Mustangs prevailed on a walk-off, three-run single by junior right fielder Emily Carr. Jordan Elias ran though coach Mike Smith’s stop sign at third base to score the winning run.
Earlier in the day, Cajon captured the Division 5 championship when senior shortstop Kim Rodas lined a single to left field to bring in Mercedes Alba for the deciding run with one out in the bottom of the eighth.
Inland softball teams have a long history of walk-off wins in CIF Southern Section championship games. The ones by Roosevelt and Cajon this past Saturday were the eighth and ninth walk-off championship wins by an Inland team since the 1996 season.
Here is a look at the other memorable walk-off victories by Inland softball teams in section finals.
Norco coach Rick Robinson has guided seven teams to section championships, and the first one came in walk-off fashion. He was in his third season at Centennial in 1996, and the Huskies outlasted Cerritos in 10 innings to claim the Division 4 crown. Jennifer Tolton singled up the middle with two outs to score Nicole Miller and give Centennial the 4-3 win. Tolton also retired the final 13 batters she faced that day.
“For some reason, before I came up, I just knew I was going to hit that pitch,” Tolton said. “I was just looking around, seeing if I could hit it through a hole somewhere.”
The 2001 season saw the Southern Section softball finals switch venues, from Mayfair Park in Lakewood to its current home of Barber Park in Irvine. And two Inland teams had walk-off victories that first year.
Linfield Christian won
Upland players surround home plate to congratulate Emily Capobianco following her walk-off homerun in the CIF-SS D2championship, over Villa Park in 2021.
the program’s sixth section championship, beating Oaks Christian 4-3 in 10 innings in the Division 6 title game.
Linfield Christian scored two runs in the seventh to force extra innings, and the Lions prevailed in the 10th when Valerie Alston smacked a double to right field to bring in Deanna Neal. Alston’s hit sent coach Scott Raftery out on a high note, as he announced his retirement after the game.
The next evening, Rancho Cucamonga and Esperanza were locked in a scoreless game in the Division 1 final into the 13th inning. Rancho Cucamonga pitcher Valerie Sevilla got through the top half of the inning, and the Cougars won when Serena Fierro singled and later scored on a dropped pop-up with
two outs.
Those three games have something else in common, as each one was close to reaching the three-hour time limit. A co-championship would have been declared if the score remained tied at the time limit.
Ten years passed until the next Inland team had a walk-off win, but it was one of the most dramatic of all.
Santiago trailed Anaheim Canyon 1-0 going to the bottom of the seventh inning in the 2011 Division 1 final. Three hitters in the bottom half of Santiago’s lineup drew a walk, setting the stage for Lauren Sweet, the Sharks’ leadoff hitter and top power hitter. Sweet worked the count to 3-1, then hammered a pitch over the center-field fence for a grand slam to give
Santiago a 4-1 win and the program’s fourth section title.
“I could never have imagined everything ending that way,” Sweet, a senior catcher, said. “When the count got to 3-1, I looked for a pitch I could drive. And I ended up getting the pitch I wanted.”
Sweet’s grand slam was not the last time an Inland team won a title on a walkoff homer.
Kaiser claimed the Division 4 title in unusual fashion in 2012. Krystel Gabbard (Kaiser) and Jasmine Antunez (Garden Grove) waged a pitchers’ duel, and neither team scored for 10 innings. Alyssa Dilay led off Kaiser’s half of the 11th with an infield single, and pinch runner Rebecca Garcia moved to third on a sacrifice and ground out. Garcia eventually raced home
for the winning run on a passed ball with two outs.
“When I saw it, I knew I was going to score,” Garcia said.
In 2017, Murrieta Mesa became the second Inland softball team to win a section title via a walk-off home run. Murrieta Mesa and Hart went to extra innings with the score tied at 1. Lauren Randle led off Murrieta Mesa’s half of the eighth inning with a single. Coach Tony Romero had players bunt in similar situations earlier in the game, but that changed with Zoey Clark, the team’s clean-up batter, at the plate. Clark jumped on the first pitch and drilled it over the wall in center field for a two-run home run.
“I’ve never hit a walk-off homer before,” Clark told The Press-Enterprise. “I wanted that one real bad.
I knew the adjustment I needed to make from the first time that I faced her, and I was able to get a good pitch. That hit was for my girls.”
The 2021 Division 2 championship game featured another great pitchers’ duel between Upland’s Sarah Haendiges and Villa Park’s Sydney Somerndike, with the two aces matching zeroes for eight innings. Upland catcher Emily Capobianco made sure her battery mate’s effort did not go to waste, as she turned on a pitch and cracked a solo home run in the bottom of the ninth to lift the Highlanders to the victory.
“It’s a crazy feeling,” Capobianco told The Orange County Register. “It’s kind of indescribable, but I’m so glad it happened and I’m so glad I was with all these girls doing it.”