Huntington Beach softball deals Marina first league loss
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Marina’s bid for its first softball league championship in a dozen years will have to wait a few days, a decisive showdown of reigning CIF Southern Section champions looming after Huntington Beach handed the Vikings their first Sunset League loss of the season.
Cali Siguenza hit a two-run homer in the fourth inning, and fellow sophomores Ruby Fauscette and Juliette Foutz quieted Marina’s bats as the Oilers claimed a 2-1 home victory Thursday evening, their seventh triumph in eight games over four seasons against Vikings ace Mia Valbuena.
A win would have given the Vikings (19-7, 10-1 in the Sunset League), last year’s Division 3 titlists behind their dominant ace, a share of the league crown. Now they must take down — at home on Tuesday afternoon — perennial powerhouse Los Alamitos (17-8, 10-1), last year’s Division 2 champ, to be No. 1. They won the first meeting, 2-1, at Los Al.
“It kind of hurts a little bit,” said Valbuena, who was sharp most of the way, surrendered three hits, struck out seven and escaped a bases-loaded jam in the first inning. “[Winning the title is] something we’ve wanted to do, especially as it’s [so many of] our senior years. We’ve wanted to do it all four years. But we still have our chance on Tuesday.”
Marina didn’t have a hit off Fauscette until the fifth inning, when Kimmie McDonnell doubled with two outs and came home after successive singles by Sophia Capelle and Eva Mazzotti and was unable to capitalize with bases loaded and none out in the sixth.
“We got a late start,” said Marina co-head coach Shelly Luth, who is retiring at season’s end after 40 years in the program, 32 as head coach across two stints. “And then when we got it started, we just couldn’t push a run. When you have bases loaded and no outs, that’s not situational hitting. ... We haven’t been hitting like we are capable of hitting, and so we have focused a lot on that, and I’m not sure why we’re not seeing the ball right now. Hopefully, we can turn it around and be ready for Los Al on Tuesday.
“Maybe we needed a loss. You know what I mean?”
Valbuena (18-3), making her 100th Marina career appearance in the circle, was cruising until the fourth, when Emma Johnson led off with a double to the wall in right-center, and Siguenza easily cleared the left-field wall four pitches later.
A right-hander headed to Michigan, Valbuena said she might have “let up a little bit on the spin” during the sequence, that perhaps her pitches “weren’t moving” enough. “That’s my best guess.”
“She got one over the plate, and they’ve got good hitters,” said Luth, who has won 11 league titles with Marina, the last of them shared with Los Alamitos in 2014. “If they’re looking for the rise ball and they find it, it’s going to go a long time, because she’s throwing 67 miles an hour.”
Siguenza said it “felt really good to hit that,” that she “felt like I did a lot for my team there,” and that knocking off the league leaders was a thrill.
“It felt good, because I think they’re undefeated,” she added. “I know that hurt them a little bit, and it kind of feels good to be the one to do that.”
Valbuena was perfect the rest of the way, Huntington Beach’s only baserunner reaching on an error in the fifth.
“It maybe woke me up a little bit,” Valbuena said. “I was, like, ‘Whoa, now I got to focus in.’ I told myself, ‘They’re not doing that again.’”
Fauscette, a left-hander who struck out five, outdueled Valbuena into the fifth, then departed after hitting Gabriella DiBenedetto with a pitch to start the sixth. Mia and twin sister Avi Valbuena loaded the bases when their sacrifice bunts led to errors, but the right-handed Foutz cleaned it up, with shortstop Ella Carreon diving to snag McDonnell’s line drive to end the threat.
Huntington Beach (17-10, 7-4), which lost the first meeting, 9-0, would finish alone in third place with a victory in Tuesday’s finale at Newport Harbor.
“We’re getting better, that’s the key,” said Huntington Beach coach Jeff Forsberg, who has groomed a junior-heavy squad this season after winning a share of last year’s Sunset League title. “We started [the season] slow, and we’re getting better every day. I wouldn’t want to play us down the road.”
