Top-Seeded Foothill Falls Short, 3-1

Marie Gieron’s tears came a lot easier than her words after top-seeded Foothill was knocked out of the Southern Section softball playoffs Tuesday.

“We played a high-caliber team,” she said. “We played with class and we fell short.”

The Knights fell short in many ways in their 3-1 loss to fourth-seeded Camarillo in the Division I semifinals at Orange Coast College.

They fell short of their expectations--reaching the final. They fell short of their abilities--making two uncharacteristic errors in the fifth inning that resulted in two runs. And they fell short literally--with Camarillo’s Jessica Ziese’s run-scoring double going over the outstretched arm of center fielder Lauren Bauer by a few inches in the third inning, and with Gieron coming two feet short of hitting a home run in the bottom of the seventh.

“There were,” Gieron (22-3) admitted, “a lot of ifs.”

* If Marisa Holmes didn’t leave the base too soon in the first inning, negating Bauer’s single, the Knights (29-3) would have had runners at first and second (or third) with one out and Robin Tessman on deck; instead, Holmes was out, Bauer struck out, and Tessman doubled in the second inning.

* If the ball doesn’t take a bad hop off Jenny Beltran’s chest leading off the decisive fifth inning, and if shortstop Jamie Clark doesn’t ease up on her throw on the next batter and pull Tessman off first base, then maybe Kortney Edge’s seeing-eye ground ball doesn’t do any damage and Bauer never has to throw home trying to nail the second runner trying to score, only to watch catcher Cheri Nierman drop the ball on a sure out.

* If pinch-runner Sarah Evans doesn’t get thrown out at third on a ball that popped out of the catcher’s mitt, ending the game, then maybe the on-deck hitter, Clark, who holds the school record for runs batted in (31) and who drove the ball deep to right-center in her first at-bat, gets another chance to hit.

“Last year, I felt we were beaten by an inferior team [Westlake Village Westlake] and this year I can’t say that,” said Foothill Coach Joe Gonzalez, whose team was ranked No. 2 in a state poll released Tuesday and scored its only run in the fourth on Beltran’s single.