Jocelyn Alatorre (77) of El Modena hits the ground ball scoring Kylie Tafua (14) and Kaitlyn Galasso (56) to take the lead against Los Alamitos in the second round of the Michelle Carew Classic softball tournament at Peralta Park in Anaheim on Thursday, March 28, 2024. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)
ANAHEIM — The El Modena softball team trailed by three runs and hadn’t scored going into the final inning against Los Alamitos, one of Orange county’s hottest teams, in the second round of the Michelle Carew Classic Thursday at Peralta Park.
But as Vanguards coach Bobby Calderon said after the game, when you put the ball in play, good things can happen.
That was the case for the Vanguards, who scored two runs on errors followed by a two-run single from sophomore Jocelyn Alatorre, lifting El Modena to a 4-3 victory over the Griffins, who had won 10 in a row coming into the contest.
El Modena (16-3), ranked No. 6 in Orange County, moves into the quarterfinal round of the Gold Bracket and will play at 3:15 Friday at Peralta Park
The Griffins (15-4), ranked No. 3 in the county and the tournament’s defending champion, drop to the Silver Bracket and are scheduled to play at 9 a.m. Friday at Peralta Park.
“I was just sitting on something down in the zone, something able to hit to the right side and at least get one run across and then it just happened to go in the right spot and get two,” Alatorre said. “I was really excited. You go from zero to 100 really, really quickly. It was a really fun game.”
El Modena starting pitcher Sara Pinedo retired the side in order in the first three innings before Los Alamitos collected three hits in the fourth, with Callie Fitzpatrick’s two-run double giving the Griffins a 2-0 lead.
Isabella Rodriguez’s RBI single in the fourth for Los Alamitos made the score 3-0.
The Vanguards had chances to score in four of the first five innings but came up empty each time.
El Modena stranded runners on second and third in the second, left a runner on third in the third, failed to score with the bases loaded and one out in the fourth and left runners on second and third in the fifth.
“Obviously we knew coming into today we were up against a very tough opponent and so we were looking forward to the challenge,” Calderon said. “I thought we got off on the right foot last night (a 4-2 victory over Beaumont), and we came in and we were ready to go.
“Throughout the entire game we had opportunities to score. That’s kind of been our mentality as of late, is keep fighting, keep fighting because it’s going to open up. Eventually we’re going to get those runs across and when we do, good things tend to happen for us in big ways.”
The championship and consolation finals are scheduled to be played Saturday, but with rain in the forecast, tournament organizers have had to change the schedule.
Organizers hope to play the first- and third-place games Saturday morning, but if rain forces the Saturday games to be canceled, the winners of Friday’s two semifinal games in the Gold Bracket would be declared co-champions.
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