BY NATE KOTISSO | STAFF WRITER
MISSION — The odds were stacked against the Mission Veterans Patriots when they drew Corpus Christi Carroll as their area round opponent.
The Tigers aren’t quite the machine they were in 2017, when their pitching staff, led by Hannah Mayo, helped carry them to the Sweet 16. Mayo is currently pitching at Texas A&M, while Carroll replaced their senior standout for Vanessa Quiroga, a freshman standout-in-the-making.
The Patriots didn’t have an answer for Quiroga. Her contributions in the circle and at the plate earned the Tigers a berth in the third round of the playoffs with an 18-3 win on Saturday afternoon.
“They’re a very athletic team, and they’re a very fast team,” Mission Veterans coach Vivian Ray said. “It came down to simple, little mistakes, but those mistakes were two bases or two people scoring. Those are things that we’ll have to work on next year. We did the best we could.”
Mission Veterans lost 11-1 in Friday’s Game 1 from Corpus Christi. The bats couldn’t keep the team in the game then, but they did begin to come around in Game 2.
Facing a 5-0 deficit entering the bottom of the third, the Patriots started to string some hits together off Quiroga. Senior Karyna Lozano and sophomore Stephanie Torres reached to start the frame and later came around to score on a two-run single by senior pitcher Iliana Contreras. Two batters later, catcher Justine Galvan drove in Contreras with a double to cut Carroll’s lead to 5-3.
The Patriots had the tying runners on second and third with one out, but they couldn’t push across any more runs against Quiroga. She held the Patriots to three runs on five hits and five walks with seven strikeouts.
Quiroga was a terror in the batter’s box, as well, going 4 for 4 with five runs batted in and a run scored.
“When we got within two, I thought we were going to make it into a ballgame,” Ray said. “But we ran into some trouble when they came back up again. We couldn’t recover from it.”
The Tigers responded with furious rallies in the fourth and fifth innings. Carroll dropped seven runs in the fourth and six more in the fifth to seal the Patriots’ fate.
“Our team got rattled when they started hitting and hitting,” Contreras said. “I think they got my timing down, and they just hit the ball wherever it was. I was trying to pitch them outside and inside with different pitches, but they were really good at making contact.”
The book on the season is closed, but not without Mission Veterans making its mark in 2018. The Patriots’ senior class exits with the program’s first outright or shared district championship in 14 years while also qualifying for the area round for the first time in four years.
“I’ll always look back at our last district game against Valley View as a special moment,” Contreras said. “The energy in the dugout was awesome. We knew we were going to come out with a district championship. I’ve played with our coaches for four years. When I was a freshman, I told them that I’d get them a district championship by my senior year, and we did.”
“I’ll never forget how united we were as a team when we were super young,” Lozano said. “We built ourselves up, because we couldn’t have done it without each other and our coaches, especially. As Coach Ray said, ‘We set the standard for everybody else behind us.’”
Natalie Cavazos, the Patriots’ No. 2 hitter, was originally a Mission High Eagle but will graduate a Patriot.
“I met some great people here,” Cavazos said. “Our coaches treated us like we were their own. Although we wanted to go farther, I feel like we ended the season about as perfect as it could be.”