LAKEPORT — Valerie Strate saw what she wanted and hit it up the middle. Heather White got what she wanted and hit it a lot farther.
Strate”s pinch-hit single in the bottom of the sixth inning tied the score at 4 and White followed by hitting a towering fly ball over the left-center field fence for a three-run homer as the Clear Lake Cardinals rallied to beat the Cloverdale Eagles 7-6 to secure the undisputed North Central League I softball championship on Thursday afternoon in Lakeport.
Clear Lake capped a 14-0 league season and avoided a possible co-championship with Cloverdale (11-2), which still has one game remaining, today in Middletown. Had the Eagles beaten the Cardinals and gone on to force a tie for first, a one-game playoff would have been held Saturday in Cloverdale to determine who gets the league”s automatic playoff berth for the upcoming North Coast Section Division IV playoffs.
“I”m very happy to avoid that playoff game,” a relieved Clear Lake coach Gary Pickle said after the Cardinals withstood a two-run Cloverdale seventh to win it. “If we had lost it would have changed our seeding (for the playoffs). We should get a pretty good seed.”
Leading 4-1 going to the bottom of the fifth, Cloverdale watched that lead shrink to 4-3 as White and Coree Alexander hit back-to-back RBI doubles with two outs. The Cardinals should have had another run but a baserunning mistake earlier in the inning cost them.
Down 4-3 heading into the bottom of the sixth, the Cardinals made two quick outs. Cloverdale pitcher Taylor Spaulding was one strike away from making it a 1-2-3 inning when Clear Lake”s No. 9 hitter, Hannah Norwood, tried to duck under a 1-2 pitch that grazed the top of her batting helmet. She was awarded first and the rally was on for the Cardinals.
Morgan Psalmonds (3-for-4) singled Norwood to third, at which point Pickle went to his bench for pinch-hitter Strate.
“We told her to go up there and take the ball up the middle, and that”s what she did,” Pickle said of Strate, the team”s backup catcher.
Strate jumped on Spaulding”s first pitch and grounded it into center field to score Norwood. As Psalmonds drew a throw at third base and was safe Strate moved up to second.
“That was a big moment for Val,” Pickle said of the clutch at-bat.
White hit the very next Spaulding pitch over the fence in left-center. When the ball left her bat, it looked like it might be caught in deep center, but it just kept on sailing, aided by a breeze blowing out to center.
“It got up into the jet stream and just kept going,” said Pickle, who added, “It doesn”t hurt to pray.”
Clear Lake”s 7-4 lead was put to the test in the top of the seventh by the Eagles, who mounted their own two-out, bases-empty rally. Jasmin Orozco started it by singling and moving to second on a wild pitch. Spaulding singled Orozco to third and also moved up a base on another wild pitch while Orozco held her ground at third. Monica Lemley, who had homered earlier in the game to give the Eagles a 2-0 lead, stepped to the plate and worked the count to 2-2. She then popped the ball up in foul territory but first baseman Psalmonds dropped it for an error. Given a second chance, Lemley (3-for-4) singled to left field to score both runners. Worse yet, Marsha”na Sugimoto”s throw from the outfield sailed over the cut-off man”s head for an error, allowing Lemley, the potential tying run, to advance to second.
Lauren Cheli fell behind in the county 1-2 before hitting a routine grounder to White at second base. White”s perfect throw to Psalmonds ended the game and touched off a Clear Lake celebration.
“Our seniors have lost only one league game in their four years,” Pickle said of the span 2009-12, during which the Cardinals are a combined 37-1 with three undisputed league titles and one co-championship. They”ve now won 36 straight league games.
All five seniors on the Clear Lake roster — White, Alexander, Savannah Dekeyser, Vanessa Tullos and Wingler — were instrumental in the victory at various points.
— White went 2-for-4 with a double, game-winning home run and four RBI overall.
— Alexander went 1-for-4 with a RBI.
— Dekeyser went 1-for-3 with a two-out RBI double in the bottom of the fourth that cut Cloverdale”s lead to 2-1.
— Tullos went 2-for-3 with a double.
— Wingler struck out four and walked two in registering her 18th win of the season against only two losses.
“Em has been struggling a little bit but she felt good today,” Pickle said. “I think it”s the best game she”s pitched in a while.”
Clear Lake”s defense came up with a handful of big plays but also turned some easy ones into real adventures (and was charged with four errors overall).
“I thought we played really good defense although we didn”t make some of the plays we should have made,” Pickle said.
Cloverdale scored on a double-steal in the third inning to go up 1-0. Lemley”s home run, a shot to left-center field in the fourth, made it 2-0 before Dekeyser”s RBI double in the bottom of the inning cut it to 2-1.
The Eagles tacked on two more runs for a 4-1 lead in the top of the fifth, the first scoring on an error and the other on Spaulding”s sacrifice fly to center field.
Spaulding struck out five and walked one while Wingler struck out four and walked two.
While Pickle was obviously happy to nail down another league championship, he gave considerable credit to Cloverdale for making Clear Lake earn another hard-fought win and league race.
“It”s just a case of two good teams fighting to the very end … no one gave up,” Pickle said. “It was one of those games where the winner is the one who can hang in there the longest and grind it out.”
Clear Lake and Cloverdale will learn on Sunday where they have been seeded and who they will be playing next week when the NCS playoffs open.
The Cardinals take a 19-2 overall record and a 12-game winning streak into the postseason.
