Vintage rolls past California, advances to first section semifinal appearance in nine years
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
This has been one heck of a year for the Vintage softball team. Just last week, they won their first league championship in seven years and their first playoff win in the same amount of time on Tuesday.
More history was made on Friday afternoon when the No. 3 seed Crushers trounced No. 6 seed California-San Ramon 12-0 in five innings to punch the program’s first semifinal appearance since 2013.
“It’s awesome,” Vintage senior Raimy Gamsby said of the history that was made. “I remember my freshman year we lost our first playoff game and we were thinking that we were going to get more chances. But it turns out we only got one. So I’m just I’m glad we’ve gotten this far and I hope we can make it all the way.”
The game was highlighted by the six-run bottom of the fourth where Vintage put up a six-spot and hit three home runs. Two of the home runs came from Shelby Morse and Emily Vanderbilt who hit back-to-back home runs for the first time all season.
Morse’s home run went over the scoreboard in center field and was her seventh-round tripper of the season. As for Vanderbilt, her homer cleared the batting cages on the nearby baseball field and was her ninth of the campaign.
The pair of home runs from Morse and Vanderbilt was something that Vintage first-year manager Megan Lopez had been waiting to see.
“I am very pleased,” she explained. “It’s one of those moments where you are emotional for them. Like you have some of those final moments with your seniors and seeing it all come together all the hard work, the fruits of their labor, it’s emotional seeing them do well at the end here.”
Meanwhile, Morse said she told Vanderbilt that it was her turn to hit a homer after doing so in the at-bat before.
“She was telling me last week that every time I hit a home run she strikes out after me,” Morse pointed out. “So after I run the bases, I tell her ‘now’s the time. Back-to-back let’s go.’ It was really great to see that because we’ve been working towards it. It was just like a funny coincidence and it’s amazing that we did it back-to-back finally.”
Also adding to the power show in the inning was freshman Angie Rubalcava who sent a two-run blast out to left-center that also brought in Ava Raines who reached on a single earlier in the frame.
The other two runs in the fourth came when Devin Viruet singled and moved to second on a Raimy Gamsby groundout before stealing third and scoring on a double by Brianna Allen. Allen was able to advance to third on the single by Raines and later came into score on a sacrifice fly to right field by Taylor Lauritsen.
Vintage also showed how deadly they can be when it comes to playing small ball in this game too. After all, they scored their first run of the game thanks to playing some small ball in the first inning. Rubalcava walked and got so second on a sacrifice bunt by Audrey Manley before swiping third and coming in on Morse’s frozen rope single that went to right-center.
Then in the second, Gamsby led off the inning with a single, and her courtesy runner Jillian Harnois got to second on an Allen sacrifice bunt, to third on a single by Raines before scoring on a bunt single by Lauritsen. A single by Manley got Raines to third before she scored on a Morse single.
“I love small ball, and it’s really special to have a team that can drop the bombs,” Lopez said of the use of small ball. “But it’s also pertinent to have those moments where we can drop a bomb, we can, we can steal and we can have a squeeze and that’s part of this team really being that whole package.”
The Crushers also pushed three more runs across in the third. Allen began the inning with a single and swiped second before coming in on a single by Raines into center field. Lauritsen then came up and roped a double over the left fielder’s head that went all the way into the corner allowing Raines to score. After Lauritsen stole third, she came in on a single by Rubalcava.
In the circle, Gamsby was flat-out unhittable. She gave up just a hit in five innings of work in the game on her way to the winning decision.
“I just really wanted to work on my spin today,” Gamsby said of her marvelous performance. “You know, give up as little as possible so we could win this game. I’m lucky that we were so strong offensively. It was really nice to have those insurance runs.”
The Rutgers-bound right-hander also got 13 of the 15 outs by way of the strikeout on a very tidy 61-pitch effort.
In the semifinals, the Crushers will travel to Brentwood to take on No. 2 seed Heritage who beat seven seed Clayton Valley 5-3 on Friday. The game will be a 5 pm start on Tuesday afternoon. You can view the updated bracket here.
