PETALUMA — Suffering one of their tougher losses in several seasons, the Clear Lake Cardinals watched an 8-4 lead vanish in the bottom of the sixth as they fell 9-8 to the St. Vincent Mustangs in a North Central League I South softball game on Tuesday in Petaluma.
DJ Garcia”s three-run home run erased an 8-6 deficit with one out in the bottom of the sixth. The Mustangs, who were making their South debut, had already pushed across two runs in the inning before Garcia completed the comeback. Alyssa Garcia smacked a two-run shot in the bottom of the first to give St. Vincent a 2-0 lead.
“We really didn”t do a good job in that sixth inning,” Clear Lake coach Gary Pickle said, pointing to an error that could have been a double play. “We made mistakes at the wrong times.”
Clear Lake (1-1, 12-4) jumped ahead 6-3 on Rebecca Baker”s grand slam to right field in the top of the third inning.
“She hit that thing a mile,” Pickle said of Baker”s two-strike, two-out home run.
St. Vincent closed to 6-4 in the bottom of the third, but Clear Lake added single runs in the fourth and fifth for an 8-4 lead.
Baker (3-for-3, 5 RBIs) singled to open the top of the seventh and advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt, but she took too wide a turn at second and the Mustangs threw behind her to record the game-ending out.
“She felt pretty bad about it,” Pickle said. “We should have been aware of that because they did it earlier in the game to Rylie (Gabehart), but she made it back to the bag.”
In other action Tuesday:
Kelseyville 7, Lower Lake 3 (9 inn.)
At Lower Lake, held scoreless since a two-run first inning, the Kelseyville Knights erupted for five runs in the top of the ninth to beat the Lower Lake Trojans in an extra-inning NCL I North pitcher”s duel.
Freshman Sabrina Lyon worked all nine innings for the victory, striking out seven and walking four. She was replaced by Jillian Allen, who walked two batters to open the fifth and then left the game, at which point Lyon returned to the mound and closed it out.
“That”s asking an awful lot to go nine innings on the hottest day of the season so far,” Kelseyville coach Greg Giusti said. “She”s turning out to be quite a solid little player.”
Kristen Garcia was matching her zero for zero until the top of the ninth. Garcia went the distance for the Trojans (0-2, North, 4-10 overall), striking out five and walking none.
“She pitched a heck of a game,” Lower Lake coach Tim Sherrell said.
After Kelseyville (2-1, 6-8) jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the top of the first, Lower Lake came back to tie it with single runs in the third and fifth. That was all the scoring until the ninth.
“A couple of hits and a couple of errors,” Sherrell said of the sparks that ignited Kelseyville”s five-run outburst in the ninth.
Lower Lake got one of those runs back in the bottom of the inning.
Sarah Johnson went 2-for-4 with two RBIs for the Knights and Darlena White went 2-for-4 with two RBIs for Lower Lake.
Third baseman Mirella Valencia and shortstop Stefanie Mederos turned in solid efforts in the field for the Trojans, according to Sherrell.
“It was really a well-played game,” Giusti said.
“We learned we can compete,” Sherrell added.
