West Catholic Athletic League champion Saint Francis-Mountain View survived a seventh inning rally by Santa Teresa-San Jose to hold on for a 4-3 CIF Central Coast Section Open Division semifinal victory on Wednesday night at PAL San Jose.
With the win the Saint Francis (23-7) will play for a first ever CCS title when they meet their league rival Archbishop Mitty-San Jose on Saturday at 2 pm back at PAL.
Saint Francis has been a runner-up twice but the last time was in 1997 in the Division II title game and the other was in the 1989 Division I championship.
“I’m really happy for these kids, and especially our seniors who have worked so hard for four years to get to where we are,” said Coach Mike Oakland.
First-year Coach Oakland came over to softball from the Saint Francis baseball team where he compiled a compiled a 273-78-1 record in 11 seasons. Last year’s team was the CCS Open Division winner.
Despite winning the WCAL and beating Mitty twice during the season 1-0 on the road and 9-8 in 10 innings at home, the Lancers only received the No. 6 seed in the CCS points system while Mitty was just a No. 4 seed.
With a points system that rates the WCAL the same as the other top three leagues in the CCS, their wins and losses counted the same, however it’s hard to argue the WCAL is not superior. Hence, it’s not surprising the league’s top two teams will meet for the first-ever CCS Open Division championship.
Prep2Prep had suggested the possibility was strong the two would meet, and coming into this week Saint Francis had moved into the No. 3 spot in the P2P CCS rankings while Mitty was on top.
Defeating No. 7 seed Santa Teresa (18-11) and punching a ticket to the title game was no easy task for the Lancers. After taking out second-seeded San Benito-Hollister in the first round the Saints also jumped 17 spots to No. 6 in the P2P CCS rankings, and with the close loss likely will not fall in the final rankings next week.
The story of the game was the underclass duo of sophomore pitcher Jordan Schuring and freshman first-baseman Hailey Prahm with some help from senior centerfielder Myka Hughes and sophomore Hannah Damore.
Schuring, the WCAL pitcher of the year gave up six hits, struck out four and only walked one, but she did uncork a wild pitch and hit two batters, and the Lancers committed three errors which led to two unearned runs. Schuring also got out of jams in the second, fourth and sixth innings by stranding five Santa Teresa base runners in the three innings combined.
Prahm, the only freshman to be named all-WCAL first team, was 3-for-3 and drove in three runs. Hughes had two hits and drove in a run, and Damore had two hits and scored twice.
The Lancers fell behind 1-0 in the top of the first but tied it on an RBI single by Prahm that drove in Damore.
Saint Francis added to its lead in the third inning when Claudia Costello walked, Damore singled and Katie Steffen-Brune was hit by a pitch. Up stepped Prahm and she singled in a pair of runs to make it 3-1. The Lancers got their final run in the fourth when Hughes drove in speedy freshman Monet Guido.
Trailing 4-1 in the seventh Santa Teresa got an RBI triple by speedster Brianna Ramos to make it 4-2, and then Ramos scored on the wild pitch to make it a one run game, but Schuring got the next two batters on a strikeout and fly ball to Damore to end the game.
Now comes Mitty for all the marbles and beating them for a third time this season will be no easy task against a Monarchs team looking for its 14th CIFCCS title.
“To beat Mitty you have to play your best and mistake free, and we’re going to go out there and give it everything we’ve got,” said Oakland, who will have a chance to win a second straight section title but this time in softball and not baseball.
“It would be pretty crazy if he did that,” said Mark Tennis of Cal-Hi Sports, the state's records historian.
Without a ton of research he could not be certain if another baseball/softball coach had ever won a section title in California in both sports, but Tennis was pretty sure that if it was done it was not back to back.
Prep2Prep will be on hand on Saturday for all three games. The Open Division title game will precede the Division 2 game at 4:30 between No. 3 seed Hillsdale-San Mateo and top-seeded Notre Dame-Salinas. The Salinas girls were 2-0 winners over Notre Dame-Belmont on Wednesday night at PAL.
The Division 1 game will kick things off at 11:30 am between Thursday’s semifinal winners at PAL. Upstart No. 14 seed Monta Vista-Cupertino meets Homestead-Sunnyvale in the 4:30 game while in the 7 pm match-up top-seeded Pioneer-San Jose takes on No. 4 seed Watsonville.
