UKIAH — No Brittany Rumfelt was no problem for the Clear Lake High School softball team.
Freshman Rylie Gabehart tossed a four-hitter and the Cardinals broke open a close game with a nine-run fifth inning to beat the Fortuna Huskies 13-3 in the opening round of the Ukiah Tournament on Friday at Ukiah High School.
The undefeated Cardinals (13-0) play Windsor, a 9-4 winner over Bishop O”Dowd on Friday, in today”s semifinal round at noon. St. Vincent and Ukiah will meet in the other semifinal. If Clear Lake gets past Windsor, they”ll play for the tournament championship at 4 p.m. If the Cardinals lose, they play for third place, also at 4 p.m.
Gabehart, now 2-0, was pressed into service because Rumfelt, the ace of the Cardinals” staff, was flying back from Germany.
“I”ll probably have a jet-lagged pitcher today,” Pickle said.
“Rylie threw the ball well although I would have liked to seen her cut down the walks a little bit,” Pickle added of Gabehart”s four-strikeout, four-walk day on the mound. “The defense did a great job behind her and we made a couple of outstanding plays.”
One of those defensive gems was second baseman Kacie Hinchcliff”s dive to stop a ball from rolling into right field in the bottom of the second inning.
“She made a flat-out dive on her belly, got up and threw the girl out at first,” Pickle said.
In the fourth, third baseman Jen Carley fielded an attempted sacrifice bunt and threw a high strike to shortstop Kaila Sterbank covering at second base.
“She had to stretch out to glove the ball and she kept her foot on the bag (for a force play),” Pickle said.
Clear Lake opened up a 4-0 lead with single runs in the first and second and two more in the fourth. Fortuna closed to 4-2 in the bottom of the fourth before the Cardinals paraded 15 batters to the plate during their nine-run uprising.
While the Cardinals kept their undefeated record intact, Pickle said their performance was far from flawless.
“We weren”t really strong offensively today and we did some creative baserunning,” Pickle said. “We ran ourselves out of a couple of innings.”
Candy Diener went 2-for-3 and drove in a run for the Cardinals. Sterbank went 1-for-2 with two RBIs as did Hinchcliff. Julie Jackson, Haley Sanderson and Samantha Espinoza drove in Clear Lake”s other runs.
