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Pacifica’s softball team doesn’t like being No. 2.
The reigning CIF-SS Division 1 champion made that clear after its regular-season finale. On Saturday, the Mariners received the No. 2 seed behind Orange Lutheran for the Division 1 playoffs.
The seedings mirrored the section rankings but Pacifica isn’t exactly on board.
“The rankings are the rankings, and I told (our players) to use that as fire,” Mariners coach Tony Arduino said after a 5-1 victory against Capistrano Valley on Friday. “They don’t think we’re No. 1.”
“I told them, ‘If you want to be No. 1, show it the next (four games),’ ” the coach added.
Orange Lutheran (18-3) and Pacifica (23-2) split two games with the Lancers winning the last meeting at the Michelle Carew Classic 5-1. The Mariners also lost to Canyon 2-1 at the mid-season tournament won by Norco and Saint Francis of Mountain View.
“It kind of just shook us awake,” Pacifica center fielder Kayli Counts said of the losses. “We don’t like being No. 2.”
Orange Lutheran is taking a steady approach to the postseason. The Trinity League champion wants to extend its habits from the regular season into the playoffs as its aims for its first Division 1 title and first section crown since 2002.
“(We’re) honored to get the top seed,” Lancers coach Steve Miklos said. “There are no easy games in this division as all the teams are good. We just need to stay focused.”
The top-eight teams in Division 1 will take a week off from competition before the first round begins May 7. The wild-card round of the 16-team bracket begins Thursday with seven games.
The wait for Division 1’s first round stirred some rumblings amongst coaches. Most of the other divisions feature 32-team brackets as the playoffs move toward finals May 17-18 at Deanna Manning Stadium in Irvine.
The Division 1 schedule, assistant section commissioner Thom Simmons explained, is set so not to create long gaps after the first round.
There will be two all-county clashes in the Division 1 wild-card round: Marina at Capistrano Valley and Esperanza at JSerra.
The winner of the Marina-Capistrano Valley game advances to play at Orange Lutheran.
The Esperanza-JSerra clash will pair Aztecs slugger Taylor Shumaker and Lions coach Katie Stith, both mainstays with the Orange County Batbusters travel organization.
“I am so proud of her,” Stith said Saturday of Shumaker, who leads the county with 18 home runs. “I’m going to focus my attention on my team playing sharp and to their potential.”
Pacifica, a team loaded with nine seniors, will play host to the Vista Murrieta-South Hills winner in the first round.
El Modena and Oxford Academy earned No. 1 seeds in Division 2 and Division 7, respectively.
The Vanguards (19-8) grinded through three rounds of the Crestview League to tie Esperanza for second place. Since El Modena defeated Esperanza in two of the three games, it earned the automatic playoff berth.
“We are honored that our hard work, our tough league and tough schedule is being recognized,” said Vanguards coach Bobby Calderon, whose team reached the semifinals of the Carew. “We still have so much work to do and we recognize it’s not going to be easy.”
El Modena, which starts only three seniors, is seeking its first section title since it won Division 2 under late coach Steve Harrington in 2008.
The Vanguards play host to Grand Terrace, the Division 2 runner-up last season, in the first round on Thursday.
Division 3 again didn’t feature any at-large berths, which left out solid teams such as El Dorado (15-12) and La Habra (15-13).
Oxford Academy (21-5) earned its top seed after finishing 5-5 in the 605 League to take fourth place. The Patriots won their first 17 games of the season and reached the playoffs for the first time since 2018. They open at Notre Dame of Riverside (9-11) on Thursday.
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