PLAYOFF SCHEDULE
SAN JACINTO » There may not be any written documentation, but Cajon softball coach Lee Haines called this one month ago.
“All season, I’ve been telling them it’s going to come down to a squeeze,” he said. “It’s going to come down to bunting.”
On Thursday, Haines and the Cowboys cashed in on that call. Back-to-back successful squeeze bunts snapped a scoreless tie in the sixth inning and carried Cajon to a 3-0 victory over San Jacinto in a Division 5 quarterfinal.
Cajon (22-6) will play at home Saturday against top-seeded Fountain Valley.
Kim Rodas opened the sixth with the second of her three hits. San Jacinto starter Selena Gallegos had gone to a three-ball count just once to the first 22 batters, but she walked K.C. Caldera.
That set up three consecutive successful bunts -a sacrifice by Jayna Lopez and squeezes by Siena Garcia and Pricila Cardenas.
“We do work really hard on our bunting,” Haines said. “Those two have shown they can do it.” It also takes buy-in. Asked if a squeeze felt as good as a hit, Garcia said, “It does. Even if I’m sacrificing, I know I’m helping the team.”
Handing pitcher Jada Villegas a three-run lead was tantamount to punching Cajon’s ticket to the semfinals.
As her pattern has been, Villegas was most vulnerable in the first two innings, when a couple of walks and a couple of successful bunts put the pressure on her. In the fourth, San Jacinto’s Lucero Barreras ripped a double but was caught in a rundown between second and third.
That was the last baserunner for the Tigers (215), as Villegas retired the final 10 batters. She finished with a three-hitter and six strikeouts.
“I love Jada,” Garcia said. “She’s such a hard worker. She’s always competing against girls two or three years older than her. She’s amazing.”
That was not news to San Jacinto coach Clay Cochran, who saw Villegas paint the outside corner all afternoon with both the
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Quarterfinals
(Games at 3:15 p.m.)
Division 2
Torrance at Rancho Cucamonga
Garden Grove Pacifica at Etiwanda
Division 3
La Quinta at Riverside Poly
La Sierra at Charter Oak
Division 4
Aquinas at Loyola
screwball and the harder stuff.
“She’s a lefty and that’s tough,” Cochran said. “And she has that off-speed pitch. It’s seamless and it’s so effective.”
Gallegos nearly matched her, commanding the strike zone and producing
Fullerton at Santiago
Division 5
Viewpoint at Moreno Valley
Buena at Citrus Hill
Division 6
Arrowhead Christian at Bellflower
San Gorgonio at Santa Ynez
Division 7
Baldwin Bark at Big Bear
Cornerstone Christian at Hueneme
SWIMMING
CIF State Championships Preliminaries at Clovis West HS, 1 p.m.
a string of groundball outs. The walk that proved key to the sixth was her only one.
San Jacinto is geared for a strong run with a lineup that includes three freshmen and four sophomores. Cochran, however, wouldn’t call this quarterfinal
run overachieving.
“No, this is exactly where I thought we would be,” he said. “This is where the rubber would meet the road, facing Cajon. We’ve been watching them. We knew it would probabvly come down to beating Cajon.”