Showing strength on and off field, Huntington Beach softball tops Los Alamitos
With green and gold ribbons in her hair and the No. 56 emblazoned on her jersey sleeve, Rachael Arnold, the starting catcher for the Huntington Beach High School softball team, has found ways to keep the one she loved close to her.
Arnold competes with a heavy heart. Earlier this month, brothers Josh and Jeremy Page — 18 and 17, respectively — both of whom were members of the football program at Edison, died in a car crash at the intersection of Newland Street and Yorktown Avenue.
Josh and Rachael had been dating for more than two years when her world was turned upside down. In the immediate aftermath, she had the strength to stand before the masses assembled at Edison for the candlelight vigil that would follow.
“It didn’t feel real,” Arnold said. “Not only that, I think for the high school students, he would want us to tell his story — and same with Jeremy. They were good people. Everyone’s kind of focusing on the accident, but they were good people. They were Boy Scouts and altar boys at [St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church], and they did everything under the sun to make people feel loved and appreciated, so I think they deserved it. It wasn’t like a thing of, ‘I’m strong.’ It’s a thing of, ‘They deserve it,’ because I don’t feel very strong.”
Arnold, whose own jersey number is 82, had the No. 56 — Josh’s number on the field for the Chargers as an offensive and defensive lineman — patched onto her game day jersey. She also wrote “JP56” on the inside of her forearm.
Life has happened in waves for Arnold. Huntington Beach police officer Nicholas Vella, who died in a helicopter crash in the waters off Newport Beach, was a close family friend.
The presence of her teammates has gone a long way in helping her manage the tough times. And they are not the only ones. Arnold said Josh and Jeremy’s parents were in attendance to see her play on Tuesday, as Huntington Beach played host to Los Alamitos in its Surf League opener.
“I wouldn’t be in the mental state I am without my team,” Arnold said. “Zoe [Prystajko] and all the girls, they have been my rock. If I need anything, [they are] a text away. The girls are the ones who put [Josh’s] number on the side of my jersey.”
Prystajko and Arnold were the battery that led the Oilers to a 3-1 victory over the Griffins in the league opener.
A sophomore left-hander, Prystajko recorded 11 strikeouts in a complete game, polishing off hitters with a powerful riseball. She allowed an unearned run on two hits and three walks.
“That’s definitely one of the better pitchers in the county right now,” Los Alamitos coach Rob Weil said of Prystajko. “She’s a highly-recruited kid who is probably going to be able to go wherever she wants to go. Hats off to her. She pitched a good game.”
Los Alamitos (10-4), the No. 7-ranked team in the CIF Southern Section Division 1 poll, took a 1-0 lead when Emma Haygood reached on an error and scored on a wild pitch in the second inning.
The response came right away for Huntington Beach (7-3), which battled back with a two-out double by Grace Grundstrom, followed by a run-scoring single by Morgan Drotter to tie the score the next half inning.
Los Alamitos’ Sydney Saldana and Prystajko traded zeros on the scoreboard until the fifth inning. Huntington Beach leadoff hitter Sophia Knight roped a two-out single to right. After Knight stole second base, Jaylene Duarte walked. Then the runners advanced twice on wild pitches, Knight scoring on the second to give the Oilers their first lead of the night.
It all happened with third baseman Emma McCraw at the plate, ending a 12-pitch at-bat by bringing home Duarte with a single.
“They definitely picked us up a lot, and I think it has a lot to do with the dugout,” Prystajko said of the two-out rallies her team put together. “The energy was really good throughout the whole game.”
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