Newport Harbor softball shuts out Twentynine Palms in first round
Aggressive base running gave Newport Harbor the advantage in Thursday afternoon’s CIF Southern Section Division 4 softball playoff opener.
McKayla Cotton’s best pitching performance of the year made sure that was enough, and then Chase Dionio came up big near the finish to send the Sailors streaking into the division’s sweet 16.
Cotton struck out nine in a two-hit shutout and Dionio tripled and homered — stunning herself with the latter — in a 5-0 triumph over visiting Twentynine Palms.
But it was fourth-seeded Newport Harbor’s willingness to assert itself on the bases that provided the Wave League runner-up with command in a most impressive first step on the road toward, if all goes to plan, what would be the school’s first CIF title in the sport.
“The aggressiveness of our team in this game, it was something we haven’t seen all season, I would say,” Cotton noted. “It’s been aggressive, but this game was definitely the one where we gave it our all, because we definitely want to keep going.”
The Sailors’ work on the base paths led to two runs in the second, with freshman Maia Helmar circling the bases with the help of two errors. Dionio’s triple in the fifth and two-run homer in the sixth accounted for the rest.
Twentynine Palms (13-11) had little more than two brilliant strikes to nail runners at the plate in the fourth and fifth innings to show for its three-hour trek to the coast, and now Newport Harbor (18-6) gets a lengthy trip of its own, departure 9 a.m., for Tuesday’s second-round clash with Lompoc (22-7), a 5-4 winner over Garden Grove Santiago.
Finally done with Fountain Valley, which won all four meetings and captured the Wave title en route to garnering the top seed in Division 5, the Sailors moved into the postseason with burgeoning confidence — they’re 18-2 against everybody but the Barons — and gave a nearly comprehensive performance.
“It’s a new mindset,” said Cotton, who got stronger as the game wore on, striking out six in the final three innings. “Obviously, it sucks losing league, but you’ve got to push it aside, and now we have CIF. That’s what we’re focusing on.”
Cotton had five 1-2-3 innings and allowed just three base runners, surrendering a one-out single to Jada Lampkin in the third inning. She walked Mya Chacon and gave up a single to Hailee Jenkins with two out in the seventh.
“She threw a gem today. She threw her heart out,” Newport Harbor coach Theresa Byrnes said. “She’s a senior, she knows this potentially could have been her last [high school] game, so she put everything on the line, and she did great.”
Cotton had to overcome early nerves but had command of her pitches from the start.
“They were all working today, the rise, the curve, the screw,” she said. “There wasn’t a pitch that wasn’t on.”
Twentynine Palms freshman Jenica Silvas had the Sailors off balance for a stretch, retiring four of the first five batters she faced, but they went ahead in the span of a few pitches in the second.
Olivia Williams walked on four pitches, then went for third base when Helmar singled to center. Helmar continued toward second on the throw, drawing an errant throw from third baseman Gianna Bilderain that allowed Williams to score, and then raced toward third. Left fielder Chloe McNellie, too, was off the mark, and, just like that, it was 2-0.
Newport Harbor had runners on base every inning but the third, with seven hits, six walks and a hit batter.
Newport Harbor nearly extended their lead in the fourth, but McNellie easily threw out Williams trying to score from second on another Helmar single for the first out, and two runners were stranded in scoring position.
Dionio led off the fifth with a drive to left field that McNellie misplayed into a triple, Silvas walked Cotton and Ava Nolan, both on four pitches, to load the bases, and the Wildcats went to center fielder Chacon, who walked Jianna Lopez for the third run. A fielder’s choice, with the throw to home, kept the bases jammed. Nolan took off early on Helmar’s would-be sacrifice fly to center, had to go back to third, then was gunned down at the plate by Silvas.
Dionio homered to left, clearing the fence by at least 20 feet, after Dru Stinson walked with two out in the sixth. It was most unexpected.
“I can barely even hit a home run in practice out here, because the [offshore] wind is really bad usually,” said Dionio, whose previous homer this season was in a tournament game against Capistrano Valley. “This field is like the worst one in the world [for hitting homers]. I honestly told everyone I’d never hit a home run, it’s impossible here, so I was very surprised by that.”
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