Pacifica, Foothill Play to Tie

The showdown between Orange County’s top-ranked softball teams produced plenty of clutch hitting, good pitching and outstanding defensive plays. But it didn’t provide a winner.

Second-ranked Foothill rallied from a two-run deficit to tie top-ranked Pacifica, 3-3, in a nonleague game that was called after eight innings because of darkness Wednesday at Hewes Middle School in Santa Ana.

“We’re not content with a tie,” Foothill Coach Joe Gonzalez said. “We’d rather win. But I’m happy they way the kids came back. They really battled.”

Foothill (15-2-1) lost to Pacifica (14-1-1) this season, 7-0, and the Knights fell behind early, trailing 3-1 after 4 1/2 innings. But Foothill fought back with some timely hitting and a little luck.

Lauren Bauer’s two-out, bad-hop single in the bottom of the fifth scored Eryn Manahan to close the gap to one. Then in the bottom of the sixth, Jenny Beltran hit a two-out triple to the gap in right-center field to score Jaime Clark with the tying run.

Left fielder Rosie Gustavson also made a key defensive play in the top of the seventh to help preserve the tie.

Pacifica’s Toni Mascarenas, who has signed with Arizona, hit her second double off Foothill reliever Lindsay Fossatti. With two outs, Mascarenas tried to score the go-ahead run when teammate Toria Auelua hit a line-drive single to left.

But Gustavson fielded the ball cleanly and made a perfect throw to catcher Cheri Nierman, who was waiting to apply the tag to Mascarenas for the final out of the inning.

“I would send Toni on that play 100 times out of 100,” Pacifica Coach Rob Weil said. “When you have a player like that with a chance to score the winning run . . . [Gustavson] had to field it, make a good throw, and they had to make the tag.

“Everything had to be perfect.”

Pacifica appeared to be in command early, staking junior pitcher Amanda Freed to a 2-0 lead after three innings.

Auelua’s first-inning RBI triple scored Freed and Pacifica added an unearned run in the third to make it 2-0. Freed hit a sacrifice fly in the top of the fifth to score Mascarenas to push the lead to 3-1.

Although Freed (9-0) had only given up one earned run in her previous nine starts, she wasn’t at her best Wednesday. She gave up three runs, all earned, on five hits, and two walks. She struck out seven.

“It wasn’t one of Amanda’s better games,” Weil said. “But she can’t be perfect every time out.”