The final featured two teams from warm-weather states, but the championship game of the Nike Faster to First softball tournament Saturday night in Huntington Beach, Calif. was anything but cozy.
Scott Kurtz
Tom Fadul and his Jaguar players celebrate.
In frigid (for California) low 50's cold, compounded by strong wind gusts reaching 40 mph throughout the day, Sacramento (Calif.) Sheldon and Pembroke Pines (Fla.) survived the unseasonable weather as the visitors from Florida pulled out a 1-0 title win behind the stellar pitching of Lauren Sewell, who allowed only three harmless hits—a bouncing infield single and two flairs over third.
On the opposing side, Cal signee Jolene Henderson also was clutch, giving up just three hits but two came in the decisive bottom of the sixth when outfielder Shayla Jackson, who's headed to Florida State, hit a hard drive that caromed off shortstop Morgan Otto's glove, allowing Jackson to scamper to second.
Speedy shortstop Kandyce Redondo beat out a bunt for a single advancing Jackson to third. A walk loaded the bases and with one out tournament MVP Audrey Broyles—who had three wins in the circle and closed a fourth prior to the title game—hit a hard shot to second baseman Alexa Rivera, who was unable to stop Jackson from scoring the game's only run.
Sewell started off shaky, loading the bases in the first on a walk, passed ball strikeout and a hit batter, but pitched out of that jam as well as closing the second and third innings with runners in scoring position. She was also aided by two Sheldon miscues as Otto stole second in the third but was caught off the bag and tagged out and in the fourth DeJanee Moore blooped a single over third but was called out trying to stretch it into a double.
Scott Kurtz
Lauren Sewell allowed only three hits while striking out nine.
Despite several walks and hit batters, Sewell was able to keep the Sheldon batters off balance mixing her riseball and curve. For the night, she had 9 strikeouts. Henderson finished with nine also in six innings pitched.
Broyles was the offensive star for Pines, hitting a second inning triple to go with her hit that plated Jackson.
"I've very proud of this team," Head Coach Tom Fadul said minutes after the title win, "and how we represented Florida and the city of Pembroke Pines."
"We demonstrated we had a lot of heart and I'm extremely happy on how our girls played against high quality teams. We will take what we learned from this tournament and apply it to the rest of the season as our goal is to win the last game we play."
Pembroke Pines, which was ranked No. 19 in the preseason StudentSportsSoftball.com FAB 50, will surely make a strong jump in the next set of rankings due to come out shortly. The Florida team is now 16-0.
The Charter school beat El Modena 2-0 in a semi-final game as Broyles struck out seven while allowing only two hits. Pines scored both runs in the first and the South Carolina signee made them stand up.
Sheldon (6-1), which suffered its first loss of the season, began the season No. 4 ranked nationally and made it to the finals by coming back from a 3-1 hole in the bottom of the sixth to score four runs against Ayala, which was the hottest team in the tourney heading into Saturday after having beaten the No's 1, 2 and 21 ranked teams to make it to the semi's.
Top 12 Finishers 1st Place: Pembroke Pines 2nd: Sheldon 3rd: El Modena 4th: Ayala 5th: Santiago 6th: Valencia 7th: Canyon 8th: Notre Dame 9th: Norco 10th: LB Wilson 11th: El Toro 12th: Spanish Springs Consolation: Kennedy
