Players from St. Francis of Mountain View collected the title trophy at the Livermore Stampede on Saturday and surrounded tourney MVP Ava Bulanti. Photo: Mark Tennis.
There was only a mini-series of games last year at the Livermore Stampede softball tourney, one of the most prestigious in the state, due to rainy weather. This year, the team that won it all two years ago under normal conditions, St. Francis of Mountain View, won it again on Saturday with a 6-0 triumph in the title game over Whitney of Rocklin. Casa Grande of Petaluma won the third-place game in dramatic fashion.
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Depending on where one stands or sits, watching games at the annual Livermore Stampede softball tourney can be like watching a tennis match. One’s head goes back and forth on a swivel looking at the action on one of two fields in which games are being played simultaneously.
This year’s final two games played on Saturday night at the Ernie Rodrigues Softball Complex that is flanked by several of the wineries in that part of town — the championship game and the third-place game — ended at almost the same moment.
Only a few seconds after St. Francis of Mountain View had wrapped up the title with the final out of a combined no-hitter in a 6-0 victory over Whitney of Rocklin, Casa Grande of Petaluma won the third-place game on a walk-off home run in the bottom of the seventh inning by Abby McSweeney that gave the Trojans a 1-0 triumph vs Liberty of Brentwood.
St. Francis was the highest state-ranked team entering the tournament, which began on Thursday with pool play games, continued on Friday with pool play games and then each team played twice in brackets on Saturday. Head coach Mike Oakland’s girls, who won the CIF NorCal D1 title two years ago along with the Stampede title, were at No. 6 in the Cal-Hi Sports State TOP 25. The Lancers were not dominant in their pool play games, but didn’t lose and then on Saturday they were about as dominant as they could be.
Hailey Nguyen and Mercedes Coller threw the combined no-hitter in the title game on Saturday of the Livermore Stampede. Photo: Mark Tennis.
In the semifinals earlier on Saturday night, St. Francis scored three runs in the first inning and went on to blank Casa Grande, 8-0, with five runs in the bottom of the sixth that instituted a stoppage of the contest. Ava Bulanti pitched a one-hitter and she had one hit batting. The combined no-hitter in the final saw freshman Marcedes Caller spin it for five innings and then junior Hailey Nguyen take over for two more. Bulanti also went 2-for-4 with one run and one RBI in the final and was named the tourney MVP.
“We did have a great day,” said Bulanti, a senior committed to Stanford who has been one of several players that have stepped up for St. Francis this season to replace the pitching of graduated Ms. Softball State Player of the Year Kate Munnerlyn. “We played with a serious form of energy as a team in both games. It shows our strength for pitching and hitting.”
Both Bulanti and Oakland agreed that playing in the Michelle Carew Classic in Anaheim the previous week helped the Lancers when they played at the Stampede this weekend. They were 10-0 with all blowouts when they headed down there, but came home with losses to Norco (No. 1 team in state) and JSerra of SJ Capistrano (CIF Southern Section D1 semifinalist last season) with wins over Cathedral Catholic of San Diego, Oaks Christian of Westlake Village (a top 10 team in the state last season) and Mater Dei Catholic of Chula Vista (No. 1 team from the San Diego Section).
“After the Carew, we felt confident here because we faced such good competition there and that we were more prepared for this weekend,” she said.
“What it really did was helped us get into tournament shape,” Oakland said. “That’s tough to do for high school teams even though the girls do it all the time in club. They’re just not used it with us.”
St. Francis was considered the visiting team for the title game and came up with two runs to start the contest. Junior outfielder Jaime Oakland, the coach’s daughter, had a single but was out at second on fielder’s choice. Another single by Bulanti and a wild pitch put runners at second and third and then with two outs senior outfielder Hayden Hummel came through with a two-run single.
The Lancers (16-2) added a run in the top of the second without getting a hit. A walk, a steal, a fielder’s choice and an error helped put Maya Meltz on third base and she scored on a delayed double-steal with teammate Maya Yumiba running from first base doing a great job of inducing the catcher to throw to second.
Another run was added to the St. Francis lead in the top of the fifth on an RBI single by Bulanti. The Lancers kept on adding on with two more in the sixth on an RBI single by Oakland (she led the team with three hits) and an RBI double by sophomore Peyton Tsao.
“We pitched well, we played good defense and we had timely hits,” said Oakland when asked to describe how the Lancers played in their two games.
Neither the head coach or either of the two pitchers even knew that Whitney had been held to no hits in the seven innings.
“The most important thing for this week is that we want to get good experience for the kids that will help them down the road,” Oakland said. “We have taken out girls with a no-hitter before and we needed Hailey to face some more top competition.”
Nguyen had three strikeouts and no walks in her two innings. Caller walked two batters in the bottom of the first, but retired 13 in a row through the fifth inning. She also had four strikeouts.
“I wouldn’t say I was surprised that they could throw a no-hitter like that,” Bulanti said. “We would go into every game very confident with either of them pitching.”
Tylie Kitchen had three hits with a homer for Whitney in the Livermore Stampede semifinals. Photo: Mark Tennis.
The title game completed a yo-yo like week for Whitney. The Wildcats (14-7) began it last Monday with a 7-4 win in the Sierra Foothill League over Oak Ridge of El Dorado Hills. Oak Ridge was unbeaten at 14-0 and would have been No. 1 in the state if it had not lost that game. Whitney then had another SFL showdown two days later on Wednesday vs Del Oro of Loomis (No. 5 in the state) and you could say it didn’t go as well with a 13-1 loss. The Stampede then started for the Wildcats the very next day. They won in a pool play matchup with Freedom of Oakley, then went 2-0 on Friday in pool play games vs Alameda and host school Livermore.
Whitney played Liberty of Brentwood in Saturday’s earlier semifinal, which had beaten St. Francis’ main rival in the West Catholic Athletic League, Archbishop Mitty, 9-0, in its earlier game. A two-run homer by Tylie Kitchen helped the Wildcats get out to a 3-0 lead and they went on to beat Liberty, 6-1. Kitchen also had an RBI single later in the game and had three hits in all.
The walk-off homer by McSweeney in the third-place game also completed a 5-1 week for Casa Grande (10-5-1), the CIF North Coast Section D2 champion from last season which was making its first appearance in the Stampede. Her big hit also wasn’t arguably the biggest story of the tight game vs Liberty, either, as Kansas-bound four-year standout Lila Partridge pitched a perfect game and struck out 13 batters. Partridge didn’t start against St. Francis in the semifinals, but by the time she came in the Lancers had a 3-0 lead and they did score five runs on her in the sixth inning.
Almost all of the volunteers and everyone involved with putting on the Stampede each year also are as interested in how their team at Livermore High is doing in every game as much as they are with all the work being done. Their team had a strong week. The only loss came to Whitney in the final pool play game on Friday. On Saturday, the Cowboys (12-4) took down Sheldon of Sacramento, 8-3, and then got past Benicia, 9-5, to win the fifth-place game. Kerrigan Coates, Sofia Traverso and Gianna Willes all had two hits. Ace pitcher Kaci Norton, however, suffered an injury earlier in the day vs Sheldon and was unavailable. She was the NorCal Player of the Week just two weeks ago.
And in a nod to the strong competition throughout the three days, Livermore’s rivals in the East Bay Athletic League, Amador Valley of Pleasanton, had a tough time with a 1-4 record. The Dons, of course, are the defending CIF NorCal D1 champions.
Mark Tennis is the co-founder and publisher of CalHiSports.com. He can be reached at markjtennis@gmail.com. Don’t forget to follow Mark on the Cal-Hi Sports Twitter handle.
