The annual Strawberry Jam Softball tournament in Watsonville was
two days of hot weather and even hotter softball for the Pride of
Morgan Hill 12 and Under Girls Fastpitch Team.
The annual Strawberry Jam Softball tournament in Watsonville was two days of hot weather and even hotter softball for the Pride of Morgan Hill 12 and Under Girls Fastpitch Team.
The team played five games in temperatures well over 100 degrees and avenged its only loss by beating the San Lorenzo Jinx 6-5 in the championship game to bring home first-place trophies.
The Pride opened up tournament play by taking on the San Jose Quicksilver.
Morgan Hill took a 1-0 lead in the first and Yessi Ceja and Brianna Anglikowski combined to pitch the first five innings and held the Quicksilver to just two runs.
With the score 2-1 Quicksilver in the fourth inning, Heather Johnson walked and eventually scored. An inning later, the Pride took a 3-2 lead that would hold on as the final score. Pati Monterrey walked and stole second base, Katie Machado bunted her to third base and Annika Camacho bunted her home with a sacrifice squeeze for the winning run.
The Quicksilver had one last chance in the final inning. With nobody out and the tying run on first base, Machado came in to pitch and retired the side on eight pitches to open the tournament with a win.
The Pride’s bat came alive in its second game as every team member had at least one hit during the game in a 12-1 win over the Pajaro Valley Tremblers.
Defensively, the Pride looked sharp, including Didi Lopez, who was returning from a finger injury. Machado pitched a complete game, two-hitter and the Pride rolled on.
The third game of the tournament brought another blowout victory as Morgan Hill routed the Mountain View Nova 15-0.
Ali Stoner provided a two-run single and Monterrey crushed a powerful double to left-centerfield to lead the offense. Ceja pitched a complete game and allowed just three hits in the win.
In their next game, the San Lorenzo Jinx jumped out to a 7-0 lead in the second inning as Morgan Hill struggled defensively. But the Pride continued to battle, preventing the Jinx from scoring the rest of the way.
Morgan Hill finally got on the board in the fifth inning. Megan Perez had an infield single, Cisneroz singled to left-centerfield and Shawnee Davis delivered a line drive single to centerfield to drive in both runs. It wasn’t enough though as the Pride fell 7-2.
Despite the loss, Morgan Hill still found itself in the championship game with a rematch against the Jinx.
This time around, the Pride took the initial lead. Alyssa Vuckevich doubled and scored on a single by Monterrey to make it 1-0.
But the Jinx immediately responded with one run in the bottom of the first and then appeared to take control of the game with four more runs in the second.
In a near repeat of the earlier game against the Jinx, Morgan Hill then shut down San Lorenzo the rest of the way.
Still trailing 5-1 in the fifth, Cisneroz helped start the come back when she double to left, stole third and scored on a throwing error to make it 5-2.
The score stayed the same until the Jinx was one out away from victory.
Perez kicked off the comeback with an infield single and Cisneroz followed with another infield single to bring the tying run to the plate. With Vuckevich down to her final strike, she hit a hard ground ball to the third baseman, who made a throwing error to allow both baserunners to score.
The Jinx threw the ball away again and Vuckevich came around to score to game-tying run to move into extra inning.
In the eighth inning the game went to international tie-breaker rule with the inning starting with a runner at second base.
Stoner led off and grounded out to move Monterrey, who began the inning at second, over to third and Camacho lined a solid single to right field to give the Pride a 6-5 lead.
In the bottom of the eighth, the Jinx had a runner on third with no outs and seemed to be in good position to tie the game.
But Monterrey snagged a hard hit line drive at third base and then dove toward the bag to tag out the runner who was just off the base at third for an unassisted double play.
The pitcher Anglikowski then struck out the final batter and Morgan Hill took home its first tournament championship of the season.
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