SCC Loses to Point Loma, Faces Elimination

This season Southern California College marched to its second consecutive Golden State Athletic Conference softball championship, winning 19 games and losing only to Point Loma Nazarene.

Well, Point Loma beat host SCC again and this one was worth a lot more than its GSAC victory earlier this season.

The 2-0 victory Thursday dropped top-seeded SCC into the losers’ bracket at the NAIA Far West Regional. SCC faces another GSAC team, Azusa Pacific, at noon today. A loss would eliminate SCC and damage the Vanguards’ hopes of earning an at-large bid to the NAIA finals May 24-28 in West Palm Beach, Fla.

An SCC victory would force a rematch with Point Loma at 2 p.m. today, with another game scheduled for Saturday if needed.

And don’t think both teams aren’t thinking about getting another shot at each other.

“We definitely want to beat them one more time,” said Point Loma catcher Sumer McMahon, formerly of Laguna Hills High. “We want to beat them because they won the regional last year and they seem to beat us most of the time.”

Not Thursday.

The Crusaders, who beat Azusa Pacific, 2-1 in eight inning in the morning round, grabbed a 1-0 lead against SCC by scoring an unearned run in the bottom of the first inning, then pushed across another in the bottom of the sixth inning on a two-out RBI single by McMahon.

Despite injuring her pitching hand sliding into third base in the bottom of the fourth inning, Crusader pitcher Kristina Silva (17-7) pitched a four-hitter.

For SCC pitcher Gretchen Brandt (12-8), who shared GSAC pitcher of the year honors with Silva, it was another case of pitching well enough to win, but not getting any offensive support. The Vanguards stranded five runners.

“We didn’t hit the ball all day,” Brandt said. “We need another chance [at them], a chance for ourselves.”

Earlier, SCC managed only three hits, two in the final inning, but the Vanguards took advantage of four Menlo College errors to win, 3-2.

Menlo rallied to tie the score, 2-2, in the top of the seventh. But SCC’s Valerie Irwin drove in the winning run with a single to the fence in right-center field to score Chrissy Vega.

“We never got much going all day from Game 1,” said Coach Beth Renkoski. “We left our bats in the dugout.”