Gilroy – Get to Playoff Saturday.
That’s been the goal for the Gilroy Little League All-Star softball team throughout pool play of the Little League softball West Regionals in Vancouver, Wash this week.
So when the All-Stars suffered their first loss since the beginning of All-Star play in an 8-2 decision to also-undefeated Arizona representative Arrowhead Little League (4-0) Thursday, the disappointment wasn’t that great.
Even with the loss, Gilroy (2-1), the second-place team in the Southwest Pool, is a virtual shoo-in to make the West Regional championship playoffs Saturday for a shot at a return bid to the Little League Softball World Series. The top two teams from each pool (Southwest and Northwest) advance to the playoff semifinals Saturday.
“It looks very good for us to be playing Saturday,” said Gilroy manager Gene Carlisle. “We were 3-1 last year and made it.”
Even if the team loses to Nevada (1-2) today in the final round of pool play, run differential would still likely guarantee Gilroy a playoff seed.
Heading into the game against Arizona, Gilroy knew it would have to play its best ball. Up until Thursday, Arizona had mercy-ruled each of its opponents at the West Regional.
“They 10-runned everybody,” Carlisle said. “We kind of went in and tried to play our game, but we didn’t play it all the way.”
A rough second inning, during which Gilroy made an error that allowed Arizona to score two runs, was hard to surmount. Arizona plated five runs in that frame to take a 5-0 lead. In all, Gilroy committed four errors, which led to four unearned Arizona runs for the game.
But even after the damaging second inning, Carlisle said his team showed resiliency.
“The girls kept working, they kept fighting, they kept cheering,” Carlisle said. “I don’t think they got down. They kept saying, ‘We can keep this up, can keep this going.'”
Gilroy responded and scored its first run of the game in the bottom of the fourth inning when Melanie Morelos (2-for-3) singled and then scored when Stephanie Rodriquez reached on an error.
The Garlic City All-Stars added another run in the sixth when Michelle Sosa singled and Morelos drove a double to bring Sosa around. That made the score 8-2 in favor of Arizona.
Gilroy managed only five hits against the hard-throwing Arizona pitchers, all off the bats of Morelos (single, double), Sosa (single) and Rodriquez (single). Arizona, meanwhile, totaled 10 hits.
Gilroy’s Sarah Spindel put in a full-out effort on the mound against a strong offensive team, going all six innings while only giving up four earned runs. Her complete-game performance allowed Gilroy to keep all five of its remaining pitchers available for its 1pm game against Nevada today.
“(Spindel) did very well for most of the whole game which is why I left her out there the whole game,” Carlisle said.
Defensively, third baseman Nicole Lara displayed some impressive skills in the fifth when she retired all three batters on hard-hit grounders. Sosa also helped out with her glove work by making a running, over-the-shoulder catch in center field in the first inning.
Notes: Arizona’s team arrived at the tournament under some clouds of controversy. Little League allows teams from different leagues to play “inter-league” ball, and then combine their efforts to produce a single All-Star team that represents multiple Little Leagues. As a result, by some counts, the Arizona team is drawing from a 400,000-person population base, as compared to a team like Gilroy which draws from a 40,000 population base in the Garlic City.
