PETALUMA, Calif. – The old adage pitching and defense wins softball games, coupled with some timely hitting, was no more apparent than in the last two softball games for the Casa Grande Gauchos.
Last Saturday in the third-place game at the prestigious Livermore Stampede, the top high school softball tournament in Northern California, Kansas-bound pitcher Lila Partridge was perfect in the circle with 13 strikeouts in the 21 batters she retired, but the Gauchos were unable to score themselves.
However, in the bottom of the seventh, and after she had struck out in her first three at-bats, Utah Tech-committed junior catcher Abby McSweeney got a hold of one and blasted it over the right-centerfield fence for a walk-off home run that sealed the perfecto for Partridge in a 1-0 victory over Liberty-Brentwood.
Casa Grande (12-5-1, 6-0 VVAL) didn’t have another game until Friday afternoon when they hosted Sonoma Valley-Sonoma in a Vine Valley Athletic League matchup.
Partridge wasn’t in the circle against Sonoma Valley, but as a batter she had the game’s biggest hit when she doubled home sophomore Evelyn Baca with the only run senior Coastal Carolina-committed pitcher Geogia Moss would need in a 3-0 Casa Grande victory.
Moss had a career-high 11 strikeouts and only gave up two hits and no walks in an outstanding performance that including some solid defense behind her.
“Our pitching is good, but we pride ourselves in a pretty darn good defense too,” said Gauchos head coach Billy Brody. “Our three seniors that are committed know their role.”
Besides Partridge and Moss there is Chapman University-committed senior pitcher Brittony Johnson.
Combined they have a 1.66 ERA with Partridge leading the way with a 1.47 ERA and she’s 8-2. Her 121 strikeouts is No. 8 in the CIF North Coast Section despite the fact she’s only faced 282 batters and everyone ahead of her has faced a minimum of 350 batters and not played anywhere near as tough a schedule as Casa Grande.
As for the game against Sonoma Valley (5-11, 2-5) the Gauchos are still looking to do some more hitting, but with the kind of pitching and defense Casa Grande has three or four runs is usually enough just like it was on Friday.
“Hitting has been a weakness fort us and the girls know it,” Brody remarked. “We work on it and I think its just kind of them believing in themselves. But I’ll tell you what, when they can string them together we have a good, solid ball club.”
“When it comes to hitting one of our phrases is just do your job and pick each other up,” Brody continued. “With our pitching staff if we can get three runs like today we feel pretty comfortable.”
After the RBI double by Partridge in the bottom of the second Casa Grande added two runs in the bottom of the fourth. Baca led off with a single, stole second, stole third, and came home on a four base error when Boise State-bound senior Alex Giacomini took advantage of the miscue and not only did she not stop at first base, or second base, or third base, but came all the way around on a pseudo inside the park home run that closed out the scoring.
From there Moss struck out the side in the fifth and then retired six of the final seven batters with only allowing a seeing eye single by Dragons senior speedster Katherine Kiser. Kiser had both of the Sonoma Valley hits.
Casa Grande doesn’t have the same record at this stage of the season that it had last year but after they won the NCS Division II title last year in a 2-0 victory over Livermore, and a win over Livermore two years ago that earned them a spot in the 2024 rained out Livermore Stampede and then again in this year’s Stampede where Partridge spun her perfecto, but this year’s group got a taste the last two years in the NorCals and they want more.
“During preseason this year we wanted to face the best of the best in order to prepare ourselves for NCA and state playoffs,” Partridge said. “The Livermore Stampede was a good test to see what that preseason preparation has done for us.”
“We really want to continue to push ourselves with hopefully winning a third NCS title and then going far into the state playoffs, going further than we have in the past,” Partridge continued. “I know I want to go far and so does our team. Since this is my last season with Casa Grande, I really want to leave it all out on the field.”
Following the NCS D2 title last season Casa Grande was placed in Division I for the CIF Northern California playoffs. They traveled to Clovis North and lost a quarterfinal 1-0 heartbreaker to a Broncos team that went on to lose to eventual NorCal D1 champion Amador Valley-Pleasanton.
Brody lost two solid seniors from last year’s team, three-sport star Hannah Edwards (softball, basketball, flag football), and his daughter and leadoff hitter Marissa Brody.
However, with Partridge the centerpiece and last year’s top returner, coupled with the other two senior pitchers, plus returning contributors McSweeney, the perfecto solidifier and a hard-nosed catcher that bats leadoff to replace Marissa Brody, and Lauren Ketchu, Giacomini, plus others, the coach knew he had to schedule tough and test his talent.
To repeat as NCS D2 champions and play with the big schools in the D1 NorCals he had to make a leap of faith, and while they took some lumps to CIF Sac-Joaquin Section big schools Vacaville, Vanden-Fairfield and Sheldon-Sacramento, and they couldn’t handle NCS D1 San Ramon Valley-Danville like they did last year, and they took a lopsided loss to Cal-Hi Sports state No. 5 St. Francis-Mountain View, there were bright spots.
The loss to St. Francis came in the Livermore Stampede semifinals and on the heels of a 4-2 win over Amador Valley. Then the Partridge perfect game that got Casa Grande by far the best finish ever by a team from the Redwood Empire, in the over 31-year history of the Stampede, and there have been some good teams from Analy and Petaluma that took a shot at the top East Bay and Sac-Joaquin Section teams and came up empty.
“I’m so proud of what these girls did at the Stampede,” Brody said. “It was a real confidence booster after playing the toughest non-league schedule in the history of the program.”
Now, the question is can the Gauchos ride that pony back to the same success as last season.
They’re currently 6-0 in the VVAL but last year they went 10-2 in a 23-3 season with losses on the road to American Canyon and Vintage-Napa. Casa Granda has already beaten American Canyon at home and Vintage on the road. This week they’re at American Canyon on Wednesday and they host Vintage the following week.
Happy Easter and Passover to the Casa Grande community and hopefully the Gauchos girls can have much success the rest of the season.
