BY TJ GARCIA | SPECIAL TO THE MONITOR
WESLACO — Weslaco East’s Amanda Aguirre ripped an inside pitch — a ball she wasn’t even supposed to swing at — to right-center field, driving in two runs and capping a late five-run rally to put the Wildcats past Brownsville Hanna 5-4 on Friday and into the playoffs.
The Wildcats overcame a disastrous start, as they fell behind 4-0 before scoring three runs in the fifth inning and two more in the seventh on Aguirre’s walk-off hit.
Weslaco East earned a playoff spot on the last night of the regular season by virtue of the victory and losses by Harlingen High and Los Fresnos elsewhere in District 32-6A. Upon learning the news, the team began a euphoric celebration on the field.
Weslaco East committed two errors and yielded three runs in the opening inning. The Wildcats looked completely discombobulated in what could have been one of their worst innings of the season.
“I think it was nerves, and I think it was a lot of emotion, because our seniors were playing their last home game if we didn’t continue,” Wildcats coach Victoria Vasquez said. “But we had to buckle down, and we told them that they just have to win a half-inning at a time.”
And they did just that. Aguirre, the senior pitcher and Texas Southern University commit, and her defense got into a groove and faced just four batters more than the minimum in innings two through seven, allowing just one unearned run.
Led by the hitting of Britney Garcia (3 for 4, two runs), Jasmine Villarreal and Tatiana Cabrera, the Wildcats woke up their bats and forced their way back into the game by scoring three runs in the fifth to make the score 4-3 Hanna entering the top of the sixth.
After an uneventful sixth, Aguirre struck out a batter and the Wildcats doubled up Hanna with one out to close the seventh inning and set up their last hurrah.
Cabrera and Garcia reached safely to open the inning, and then Hanna intentionally walked Abigail Ortiz to load the bases with no outs. Aguirre followed, and on the first pitch hit a screamer deep into right-center field. That allowed Cabrera and Garcia to cross home plate with ease, giving Weslaco East the win.
“Coach told me not to swing, and I ended up swinging. I wanted to hit,” Aguirre said. “I just took a chance. It’s just that in this game, you never know what could happen. In a game like this, you just don’t know, so you take a chance. And that’s what I did.”
The final at-bat marked Aguirre’s only hit of the game. From the circle, she struck out 10 and walked two.