Tears of joy, and maybe some of relief, were shed last Saturday night at the conclusion of an exhausting three-game Region IV championship series — and the completion of a milestone for Southwest.
The Dragons (34-11) prevailed with an 8-7, eight-inning victory at Rattler Softball Stadium. Sharing a mascot with host St. Mary's University didn't give San Marcos (33-11) the boost it needed to get past a Southwest team that wouldn't be deterred from qualifying for the state tournament.
“When the 'why' makes you cry, you know you're doing the right thing,” sixth-year Southwest coach Sandy Hernandez said. “I've been crying all week long about how much this means to us. They're a great group of girls. I'm so proud of them.”
Southwest will play The Woodlands (38-3) at 6 p.m. Friday in the Class 5A semifinals on the University of Texas campus in Austin. The finals are scheduled for 4 p.m. Saturday.
The Dragons won the last two games of the best-of-three series against San Marcos after losing the opener last Thursday by 10 runs. Southwest squared the series last Friday with a commanding 7-3 win that forced the decisive game.
“They really wanted to win,” Southwest senior Kamerie Vidales said, the winning pitcher in Game 3.
“They wanted it just as much as we did,” Vidales said. “Even though it was going to be difficult, we were going to do everything we could to come up with a win.”
The triumph was all the sweeter for Hernandez, a Southwest alum who played for the Dragons' 2000 regional quarterfinal team. That was the program's high-water mark until she took over.
“It's very satisfying,” she said. “It's almost like a dream come true.”
Unlike Friday's game, Southwest trailed for much of Saturday's contest after grabbing a 3-0 lead in its first at-bat on a home run from senior Kayla Arguello.
“We have come from behind so many times,” Hernandez said. “I started to wonder if we'd run out of chances. I started thinking that, maybe, San Marcos deserves this more than we do.
“But (the girls) never doubted it.”
Senior Liz Phillips (3-for-5, 3 RBIs) produced the game-winning hit with two outs in the eighth. Phillips drove in sophomore left fielder Megan Hernandez, who had walked and taken second on Kristal Salinas' ground out.
Phillips helped send the game into extra innings, with a two-run triple that produced the tying run in the sixth and a throw to the plate in the seventh that squelched what would have been a winning run for the Rattlers.
“Like I told my team before the game,” Phillips explained. “I was going to leave it all on my field.”
Vidales (2-for-4, 2 RBI) kept the Rattlers scoreless in a six-inning relief stint after they had taken a 7-5 lead in the third inning. The senior also drove in two runs with a third-inning double.
In Game 2, Southwest rendered its 17-7 loss 24 hours earlier a distant memory. It led for all but a few moments in the third inning when the score was 1-1.
Junior pitcher Caitlin Terrazas limited San Marcos to five hits in a complete-game victory and was 2-for-3 at the plate with two RBIs. She contributed an RBI single to a three-run rally in the third.
"I got up at one point (before the game) and said we should win every inning," Terrazas said. "If we don't score, they don't score. If they score two runs, we score three."
Following a bases-loaded walk to Miranda Gonzales, Megan Hernandez drove in the winning run with a suicide-squeeze bunt. The Rattlers closed within 5-3, but the Dragons responded with an RBI infield single from Fernandez (2-for-3, RBI) and a sacrifice fly from Gabby Flores in the sixth.
“I always knew this group of seniors could do it,” Hernandez said of qualifying for state.
Source: southwest - Google News http://ift.tt/1nzNTpn
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