LAKEPORT >> The final was 14-4 in six innings, but if ever a score was misleading, it was on Tuesday afternoon in Lakeport.
The Clear Lake Cardinals beat the St. Vincent Mustangs in the semifinal round of the North Coast Section Division V softball playoffs although outlasted might be a better word to describe Clear Lake’s crazy victory that featured 27 hits — 12 of them by a St. Vincent offense that was in attack mode from the get-go.
“That was the hardest 10-run game I’ve ever experienced,” said Clear Lake coach Gary Pickle, who is in his 23rd season at the school. “I’m glad we scored those three runs in the sixth to end it because I didn’t want to go on.”
The win puts No. 1 seed Clear Lake (19-6) into the Division V championship game on Friday at 5 p.m. against the winner of today’s semifinal between No. 2 St. Joseph Notre Dame (11-10) and No. 3 St. Bernard (18-7). The championship game will take place at Clear Lake High School’s field.
“You just go and play and see where it falls,” Pickle said, offering no preference as to which team the Cards end up facing. “I know whoever else gets there (to the finals) is a good team.”
No. 5 St. Vincent (16-11) did its utmost to spoil Clear Lake’s party, one that featured a Cardinal player ejected in the bottom of the third when Clear Lake center fielder Hannah Norwood collided with St. Vincent catcher Mary Cerf while trying to score the tying run. She was called out on the play and then tossed, which means she is likely to miss the team’s championship game on Friday. Clear Lake did forge in front to stay moments later when winning pitcher Rachel Wingler (3-for-4, 3 RBIs) singled home two runs to give the Cardinals a 2-1 lead. Destinee Garcia’s two-run single two batters later made it 4-1.
Not that any lead in this game was safe until the very end. The best way to describe the happenings on Clear Lake’s home diamond Tuesday might be huge surges of momentum going one way, then the other, back again, and then back the other way one more time.
St. Vincent opened the game with consecutive singles and a run-scoring ground-rule double off the bat of losing pitcher Hannah Sarlatte to make it 1-0. Had the double not bounced over the fence, it would have been 2-0 instead of 1-0 with runners at second and third and no outs. Wingler worked out of further trouble by striking out the next three batters on 11 pitches.
“That was pretty huge,” Pickle said. “They could have blown it open right there.”
After Sarlatte struck out the side in the bottom of the first, St. Vincent loaded the bases in the top of the second with two outs and the very dangerous Sarlatte (with five home runs on the season) stepping to the play. Winger ran the count full before catching Sarlatte looking at a called third strike.
The Mustangs had two more hits and a walk in the top of the third but couldn’t score thanks in part to a 1-6-3 (pitcher-to-shortstop-to-first) double play turned by Clear Lake’s defense, which proved either brilliant or downright shaky at times against St. Vincent.
The bottom of the third began with Norwood getting plunked in the batting helmet by a Sarlatte pitch. Emily Omoitek (3-for-4, double RBI), who was only starting in right field because Shyanne Chapin was out with an illness, reached on a bunt single. Alicia Ledesma laid down her own bunt trying to advance the runners and did so, however, Norwood took a wide turn at third and the throw came in behind her. Caught in a rundown, she stayed alive long enough for Omiotek and Ledesma to move up before running into Cerf while trying to score. Norwood not only got called out but got thrown out as well. Wingler’s and Garcia’s two-run singles followed.
Clear Lake pushed its lead to 6-1 in the fourth on Omiotek’s RBI bunt double following an Anessia Jack leadoff triple, and a RBI single by Ledesma.
With momentum now clearly on the Cardinals’ side, the tsunami came roaring back the other direction. The top of the fifth opened with a single and then a dropped flyball in left field. One out later, Jules Sikora singled in a run to make it 6-2 with runners now at the corners. Kelly Stuhldeher bounced a grounder to first baseman Garcia, who threw home late as a run scored. Erin Sammon bounced a comebacker to Wingler on a play that became anything but routine when Wingler threw it away at first base for an error, another run scoring to make it 6-4 and the potential tying runs now at second and third and still only one out.
The next batter, Haley Antonini, hit a hard grounder to second baseman Emily Psalmonds whose throw home barely beat the runner for the second out. McKenna Wilson-Kay, 3-for-3 in the game to that point, struck out to end the inning.
A noticeable breeze that crossed the field at that point could have been caused by Pickle’s sigh of relief as the Cardinals escaped another major threat.
Lefty Amanda Yarger replaced righty Sarlatte to open the bottom of the fifth and quickly retired the first two batters shed faced. That’s when another wave of momentum swept over the ballfield beginning with Werner’s infield single. Jack reached on an error to keep the inning alive, Lila Ogden singled home a run to make it 7-4, and Omiotek beat out a bunt single with the runners holding at second and third. Ledesma then delivered the biggest blow of the game, a bases-clearing double into center field to give the Cardinals a 10-4 lead.
The two-out rally continued when Wingler singled home another run to make it 11-4.
“Answering right back after they scored (three in the top of the fifth) was big for us,” Pickle said. “It seemed to calm us right back down.”
St. Vincent, nearly spent by this point, tried to start a two-out rally of its own in the top of the sixth with a double off the bat of Katelyn DelaMontanya, but Wingler got the next batter to pop up to end the inning.
The Cardinals pushed their final three runs across the plate in the bottom of the sixth, the final two on Ogden’s two-run single with one out.
Game notes: If the senior Norwood’s ejection is ruled “malicious contact” with the catcher, she’ll have to sit out the final game of her season and career … Wingler struck out 10, walked one and had to work deep into a lot of counts against St. Vincent’s batters … Clear Lake has scored 32 runs in its two playoff games … Wingler is 7-for-8 in the playoffs with two doubles and seven RBIs … The Cardinals will be making their fifth sectional championship game appearance under Pickle. They are 2-2 in the first four, the last victory coming in 2007 in the Division IV finals against powerhouse St. Patrick/St. Vincent.
