By ROY HESS | THE BROWNSVILLE HERALD
The Mission Veterans Memorial Lady Patriots gained the upper hand Thursday in their Class 5A best-of-three softball playoff series with the Lopez Lady Lobos.
The District 31-5A co-champion Lady Patriots (17-8) led 8-0 after two innings and cruised to a 12-3 victory over the District 32-5A fourth-place Lady Lobos (14-18) at the Lopez field.
“I think my team was very much composed, and I think that was very good for our players because sometimes they get a little rattled,” Lady Patriots coach Vivian Ray said. “They stayed pretty calm and that helped us.
“I expected the game to be close because we barely beat Lopez (8-7) in the La Joya Tournament in February,” Ray added. “I also expected our bats to be on fire in this game, and to the degree that they were, I think we can (still) do a little bit better, but overall, I thought we did pretty well.”
Game 2 of the series is scheduled for 7 tonight at Mission Veterans. Game 3, if necessary, will be played at 5 p.m. Saturday at Lopez.
The Lady Lobos gave up 10 walks through the course of the game. With bases loaded three times in the top of the second inning, two of those walks, plus a batter that was hit by a pitch, accounted for bringing in three runs and didn’t help the Lady Lobos’ cause at all.
“We struggled with our pitching and gave up too many walks against a team that you just can’t do that against,” Lopez coach Jesse Martinez said. “Mission Veterans has good hitters, and if you give them a couple of walks, they’re going to capitalize, and that’s exactly what they did.
“Mission Veterans is a good-hitting team and unfortunately our pitching just didn’t come around,” Martinez added. “We had some moments when we had an opportunity to score some runs, but we just didn’t come through.”
The highlight Thursday for the Lady Lobos came in the bottom of the sixth inning when Kasi Rubio smashed a two-run homer over the wall in right-center field. The Lady Lobos were behind 12-1 at that point though, so her blast just cut the lead to 12-3.
Also, Rubio had an RBI single in the bottom of the third to make it 8-1. She batted 2-for-3 with three RBIs in the game.
Rubio started on the mound for Lopez, but was soon replaced in the top of the second inning by Alex Castro with the Lady Lobos behind 4-0. Castro pitched the rest of the way for Lopez.
Iliana Contreras went the distance for the Lady Patriots in earning the pitching victory. She allowed five hits, struck out three batters and walked two.
Mission Veterans scored two runs in the first inning, six in the second, two in the fifth and two more in the sixth.
MaKenzie Gerlach led the Lady Patriots with three hits, including a double, and four RBIs, going 3-for-3 at the plate.
Teammates Contreras, Stephanie Torres and Justine Galvan each collected a pair of hits. Contreras had three RBIs, Galvan two and Torres one.
“I just think it’s an exciting little series we have going with Lopez, and now we’ll see what we can do at home,” Ray said.