West Wins Arms Race, 3-0 : All-Star softball: In Ventura game expected to be a slugfest, pitchers rule.

Knowing that most of the best pitchers in the area are underclassmen, Coach Pat Glennan predicted plenty of scoring in the third Ventura County all-star softball game.

Some 30 standout seniors were to turn Borchard Park into a launching pad Thursday night, and Glennan could only hope his East team would come out on top.

Surprise.

The West scored two runs in the top of the first inning and went on to win a pitchers’ duel, 3-0.

“After the first inning, I thought I was right,” said Glennan, who coaches at Agoura High.

But Thousand Oaks pitchers Jessica Davenport and Jenny Lee held the East to one of its three hits through four innings.

Davenport and Lee were more than sharp. They combined for five strikeouts and no walks, threw only 37 pitches, 27 strikes.

Melissa Krolik of Calabasas continued the mastery in the fifth, pitching ahead in the count against all the batters she faced. After pinch-hitter Michelle McGinnis singled to open the sixth for the East and reached third on an error, Krolik slammed the door.

“I thought it was going to be a real close game, because everybody’s even here,” said Lee, who pitched only two games for Thousand Oaks during the season because of tendinitis. “I was happy with the way I pitched. My arm’s back to normal, and the fielders behind me were excellent.”

The West scored in the first when Sarah Heiler walked, and with two out, her La Reina High teammate Shane Anderson tripled to the fence in left-center field off losing pitcher Mindy Penrod of Moorpark. Anderson scored on an infield single by Kim Herman of Buena.

Anderson is bound for Stanford on scholarship. Herman is headed to Oregon State.

Herman doubled in the sixth inning over the head of East center fielder Cathy Davie, and scored to make it 3-0 when Davie dropped a fly ball by Buena’s Bevan Trueblood.

“I wish I could think of an excuse,” said Davie, who will play next season for Michigan. “I just started laughing. It was the first time something like that happened to me.”

The East had some pitching of its own. After Penrod was roughed up for three hits and two runs in three innings, Newbury Park’s Jann Thorpe was brilliant.

A third baseman who started only two games for the Panthers this season because of a jammed index finger, Thorpe struck out four, walked none and allowed no hits in 2 1/3 innings.

There were only two walks, one by Rio Mesa’s Sonia Ortiz, the third East pitcher, and the other by Ventura’s Alicia Eckberg, who pitched a scoreless seventh for the West.

Eckberg got two quick outs but walked Amy Thomas of Moorpark and allowed an infield single to Newbury Park’s Christine Arguijo. But Eckberg got McGinnis on a soft liner to second base.