LJ softball: CIF title

By Ed Piper, Jr.

In the aftermath of a CIF title, things have to look different.

La Jolla High's softball team put in all that work, had a break-through season a year ago to fall in the championship game to a superior Christian High team.

That scenario looks totally different, seen backwards through the lens of the Vikings' title-grabbing ways only four days ago.

The final against Mission Bay was a pitcher's duel, with the Buccaneers' talented freshman, Cassidy West, dominating center stage.

Besides striking out 13 Vikings, including seven in a row early in the game, she wasn't allowing many baserunners either.

Hailey Ramos, La Jolla's catcher, continued to be a revelation, getting two hits and knocking in the team's first run.

Nothing came easy, and after Mission Bay tied the game in the top of the fifth, there wasn't much else going on on the basepaths either way.

Kyra Ferenczy, the Vikings' pitcher, makes it look easy sometimes. She loves playing, it's apparent, and sometimes her pitching gets overshadowed by her adept hitting.

When you hit the way she did her freshman year, and no one else is a proficient pitcher on your team, people can start to assume you're going to be in the pitching circle each game and not think that much more about it.

But in the championship game, it came down to her and the defense keeping the Bucs from scoring further in the fifth, when they could have.

The tight play of the Vikings set up Josie Sinkeldam's game-winning hit in the bottom of the seventh, driving in Sina Anae with one out.

What happened just prior to Anae scoring was a totally nerve-wracking--from the La Jolla dugout, at least--play. Anae, a good athlete but new to softball, strayed way toward third base on Vanessa Shaffer's bunt attempt, which she popped up into the air.

Not realizing she had to get back to the bag initially, Sina, a good runner, hesitated for a moment. She was close to two-thirds of the way down the basepath.

When the popup was caught, it looked like Anae was a dead duck.

That would have been the second out, but more importantly, it would have snuffed out the potential run that she represented after a smash double to right.

Everybody in her dugout yelled at her to get back.

Somehow, like in a slow-motion movie reel, she got back to second, beating the throw. She kind of jump-slid, jamming her limb stiff-legged into the bag.

Two pitches later, Sinkeldam lined a pitch from West--all the club players either know or are aware of one another--into right center, breaking a 1-1 tie, and the celebration was on.