Heritage routs Western Chr. in D3 second round

MENIFEE >> The final score may not have suggested it, but it was a scrappy performance Tuesday by Heritage starter Tara Skinner. And a scrappy effort made for one happy pitcher.

Skinner worked her way out of a couple of early jams before she and her teammates turned their Division 3 second-round game into a runaway. When it was done, the Patriots had an 11-0 victory over Western Christian in a game called after 4 ½ innings because of the 10run rule.

Heritage (22-4) will travel to Temescal Canyon (21-5) for a quarterfinal game this afternoon.

Western Christian (21-5) has moved up the CIF ladder since winning the Division 7 title in 2019 and the Lancers had piled up impressive offensive numbers this season, reaching double-digit runs 15 times.

Skinner dealt them their first shutout, but it wasn’t as easy as the zero made it seem.

Still scoreless in the second, Skinner had two runners aboard with one out when she came back from a 3-0 count to strike out Kianna Ramirez. Two innings later, up by four, she pitched out of a basesloaded, no-out jam.

“It gets a little stressful, I won’t lie,” Skinner said. “I just try to think there’s nobody on and it’s a new inning, then keep doing what I’m doing.”

Amelia Weber and Brooklyn Lee, the No. 2-3 hitters in the Western Christian lineup, each came in hitting over .600, numbers that caught the attention of Heritage coach Raul Olivas. Skinner, however, kept the pair hitless with a walk in five plate appearances.

“I could tell they were low-ball hitters watching them taking their practice swings,” Olivas said. “We tried to elevate everything, keep everything up, and that’s basically what worked.”

Skinner’s stress level decreased significantly after the Patriots blew the game open with seven runs in the fourth. She supplied the crowning blow in the rally, a three-run homer.

“That felt amazing,” she said. “I’ve been kind of in a slump lately.”

Although it produced only one run, Olivas pointed to Adrianna Abrantes’ home run in the second that produced the first run.

“We talk about momentum all the time,” Olivas said. “We want to get and hold the momentum.”

Heritage had all four leadoff batters reach, forcing Western Christian starter Weber to come back over the plate more. Every Heritage batter reached safely at least once and all but one scored.

“What we’ve done all year is to hit timely, to get those big two-out hits,” Western Christian coach Rob Thayer said. “Today, we just didn’t do that. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.”