Bruins need extras to earn win
St. Pat’s scores 3 in eighth to grab wild road game at Berean Christian
WALNUT CREEK >> This may go down as one of those COVID-year kinds of softball games.
St. Patrick-St. Vincent and Berean Christian high schools combined for 11 errors on Tuesday at Heather Farms park, but neither team was ever out of it as the Bruins eventually prevailed, 11-9, in eight innings.
Eight of the Eagles’ nine runs were unearned in the Diablo Athletic League contest.
“Every game we’ve played, we’ve hit the ball pretty well,” St. Pat’s co-head coach Rich Gigliotti said. “Today, we just didn’t play very good defense but we hung in there. Our pitching was fantastic. Haylee (Jones) pitched great and deserved a lot better, and Sophia (Hughes) was just as good.”
Berean rallied from a 4-1 deficit to lead 6-4 with five in the second inning — but all of those runs were unearned.
Luckily for the Bruins (3-1), their bats never cooled off. St. Pat’s tied the game 7-7 with a tworun fourth and then deadlocked the game at 8-8 in the fifth before scoring thee times in the eighth.
With one out, No. 9 hitter Raenah Duran reached on a fielder’s choice, stole second and went to third on a throwing error. She quickly scored the go-ahead run on Daniella Ontiveros’ bloop single to left. Later in the inning, Alicia Campbell’s sacrifice fly and Vanessa Leon’s RBI single plated the final two runs for an 11-8 lead.
The Eagles did not go down without a fight in the bottom of the eighth though, bringing the tying run to the plate with no outs and scoring once more before Hughes got a strikeout to end the game.
It was a heck of a performance for Campbell, who reached base all five times. She had an RBI triple in the first inning, an inside-thepark homer in the fourth and finished 3-for-3. She was just a double short of the cycle.
Campbell said with a short practice schedule before jumping into the season, she expected some rocky games like this.
“Especially on defense, yes,” she said. “There are girls moving around everywhere. Today, I played second base and I’ve never played second base in my life. We just need to make some adjustments.”
Gigliotti was impressed with Campbell’s afternoon.
“The best ball she hit all day might have been the long fly ball (on the sac fly),” Gigliotti said. “They were playing her deep … they were playing her in Benicia.”
The Bruins had 14 hits overall with five extra-base hits, including triples from Hughes and Izabelle Silva. The Eagles had three extrabase hits as well.
St. Pat’s looked like it may run away with it with a three-run first. Ontiveros singled on the first pitch of the game and Silva followed with a triple to left-center to score Ontiveros. Campbell followed with a triple of her own to make it 2-0 and Angelina Orellana rapped a single to score Campbell. In the second, Hughes reached on an infield single and eventually scored on an error to make it 4-1.
Hughes, the freshman, was 3-for-4 with two RBIs and her hard-hit single in the eighth nearly took out a goose in left-center.
Ontiveras and Orellana both had two hits. Silva also knocked in two.
Hughes pitched the final four innings, allowing just three hits and one unearned run while striking out five.
“I’m really happy since we have sophomore and freshman pitchers and they’re doing really, really well,” Gigliotti said. “Anytime you score more runs than the other team, it’s a good thing.”