The remarkable run that the West Ranch softball team has gone on has carried the Wildcats to the CIF Southern Section Division 5 championship game.
The Wildcats won their final five games in the regular season and have won 13 of their last 15 overall. The latest victory was a nailbiter, a 9-7 road win in Cerritos over the Cerritos Dons.
Cerritos was down 9-2 heading into the bottom of the seventh inning and put together a five-run frame before freshman pitcher Gretchen Roen shut the door and sent the Wildcats to the championship game. West Ranch head coach Mike Merrilees said in a phone interview that he was getting nervous as that final frame went on, but knew Roen, and the defense behind her, would come through as they have throughout the postseason.
“It was definitely tight,” Merrilees said. “They have a punch-back to their team, too. They didn’t like being down 9-2, and I knew that game wasn’t going to be over fast. So, definitely nervous, but I just knew if we could get a ball in play, we would be fine.”
West Ranch scored four runs in the third inning and three in the fifth to open up a lead. Senior Isabella Swanson was key with three hits and two RBIs.
“In this 15-game spell, we’ve called it kind of ‘the Bella show.’ She’s playing at a level that is just unheard of, unseen,” Merrilees said. “Everything that comes her way, it’s just earned. The kid works harder than any kid I know. She is leading with her bat, leading with her actions, and she is the absolute heartbeat to this team.”
Hitting fourth in the lineup, Swanson and the next three hitters — juniors Payton Borland and Madison Meister, followed by Roen — went a combined 9-for-16 and drove in seven of the nine runs for the Wildcats. The lone extra-base hit for West Ranch came from freshman Kara Carnes in the eight-spot in the lineup.
Merrilees said it took a couple of innings to figure out Cerritos pitcher Ava Ceron, but once the Wildcats did, the floodgates opened up.
“It was a little unnerving in the beginning, because we were getting the ball too much up in the air,” Merrilees said. “We needed to literally just drive the ball up the middle and, single, single, single, play some small ball, and get the game moving.”
It’s an impressive run for a West Ranch team that has three freshmen and two sophomores in the starting lineup. But Merrilees said his young squad has grown up throughout the season and is now a “very dangerous group.”
“This team just continues to show up time and time again,” Merrilees said. “When you tell this group of individuals that they’re not something, they will show you that you are absolutely wrong. I said we weren’t a great hitting team in the beginning part of the year, and boy, we’re turning into a dangerous hitting team right now that plays impeccable defense. So, from that standpoint, it is a very, very dangerous combo, to go along with youth that just doesn’t know any better right now.”
The Wildcats are set to travel to Deanna Manning Stadium at Colonel Bill Barber Marine Corps Memorial Park in Irvine on Saturday for the championship game against the St. Bonaventure Seraphs. That game is set to begin at 4 p.m.
For tickets to Saturday’s championship game (general admission is $15.70, students and children are $8.35, including fees), go to tinyurl.com/4fkw6brz.
