Chatsworth Finds Gould Good as Gold : High school softball: El Camino Real right-hander pitches three-hitter, strikes out nine in 9-0 victory.

Jennifer Gould doesn’t like to waste pitches.

The El Camino Real High senior right-hander strives for perfection on and off the field and succeeds with high frequency, as her strike-to-ball ratio and grade-point average will attest.

Gould made quick work of Chatsworth on Thursday, pitching a three-hitter and striking out nine to pace El Camino Real’s 9-0 victory, and helped distance the Conquistadores from the pack in the West Valley League.

“Gould was on her game today and we just couldn’t hit the ball,” Chatsworth Coach Gary Shair said.

Of the 74 pitches Gould threw, 59 were strikes. She threw only one ball in each of the first three innings and never threw more than four balls in an inning.

Just another no-nonsense day for Gould, who ranks in the top three academically among her 600-plus classmates.

“She’s walked seven batters in 15 games,” El Camino Real Coach Neils Ludlow said. “She’s smart in the classroom and is tops in her class. And that translates to good things on the field as well.”

While the Princeton-bound Gould (13-2) might be ridiculed for not wasting more pitches, she is confident that her opponents are not getting meaty pitches.

“I try to throw to spots,” Gould said. “I work hard on placement. I don’t throw anything over the plate. I throw up, down, inside, outside.”

El Camino Real (13-2, 7-0), the only undefeated team in conference play, extended its lead over Chatsworth (8-2, 5-2) and Reseda, both of which are tied for second in the West Valley League.

The El Camino Real-Chatsworth matchup had all the fixings of a competitive game. But Gould and the hard-hitting Conquistadores proved they are in a class by themselves among area City teams.

El Camino Real, which beat Taft, 9-0, two days earlier, pounded 11 hits against Chatsworth. After scoring two runs in the fourth on a passed ball and an error, the Conquistadores broke open the game an inning later by scoring four runs on five hits.

Ramona Shelburne, a freshman who was leading the team with a .457 average coming into the game, went three for three with a run-scoring double in the fifth.

Gould followed Shelburne’s blast with three-run home run to give El Camino Real a 6-0 lead.

El Camino Real, which lost to Hart and Saugus in tournament play, added three runs in the seventh on three hits and three errors.

Defense was nothing to brag about this week for the Chancellors, who started the week undefeated. Chatsworth committed five errors against El Camino Real and nine against Reseda Tuesday.

Blame it on youth, Shair said.

“Eight of those errors in the last two games were by ninth- and tenth-graders,” he said.

Sophomore Jodi Borenstein doubled on Gould’s first pitch.

Borenstein, who had two of Chatsworth’s hits, was left stranded and the Chancellors’ only other threat came in the sixth. Borenstein tried to score from second on a hit by Jennifer Stern, but was gunned down at home by left fielder Jenny Redlin.