“These seniors have been here before and this year they set it in stone that this is what they wanted,” said Lady Lions head coach Cherita Munguia. “We knew had to finish second in district to put ourselves in position for success this round, and that’s what we did.”
The Lady Lions (17-11), coming off a 12-0 victory in Game 1 Thursday night at Angelo State University, opened the scoring against Lake View (12-15-1) Saturday with four runs in the bottom of the second inning. The first came on a frozen rope solo home run to right field by Kaydence Allen. Then, after walks to Jakayla Peek and Peyton Pena, Carlee Burks launched a three-run blast over the left field wall.
“We were struggling to find gaps, which is not normally our thing, so they decided the biggest gap out there was over the fence,” Munguia said. “That gave us momentum and it helped stifle them a little bit. Home runs are always momentum killers for the other team, so those were big.”
In the circle, Allen – who was under the weather after tossing a no-hitter Thursday – struck out 12 and stranded 11 base runners as Lake View generated eight hits, drew five walks and Brownwood committed three defensive errors.
“I don’t know how you go out and throw strikes, then go throw up, then throw more strikes, then go throw up, then hit a home run,” Munguia said of Allen. “She’s a fighter, she loves this team fiercely, she loves her coaches and she loves this sport.”
The Lady Lions boosted their lead to 5-0 in the bottom of the fourth inning as Jeniffer Romero reached on a one-walk single and scored on Chloe Walls’ RBI sacrifice fly to left field.
The lead grew to 8-0 in the fifth inning as Lila Mares led off with a walk and scored on Allen’s RBI triple to left-center field. A Nevaeh Perez RBI ground out later plated Kaydence Chandler, running for Allen, while Karina Mata knocked in Peek, who walked again, with another RBI ground out.
Brownwood scored its final run in the bottom of the sixth as Burks drew a walk and later scored on a wild pitch
Dominant through the first 11 innings of the series, allowing just two hits in that span, the Lady Lions fell victim to a four-run, six-hit top of the seventh by Lake View prior to Brownwood putting the finishing touches on the victory.
“It’s always a good reminder that we can’t always rely on Kaydence striking people out,” Munguia said. “She’s done a good job, but that’s not going to be our path way the whole time. We’re going to see more good hitters and this showed us some areas where we are weak and need to work on things. Lake View faced Kaydence seven times this weekend, so we have to be able to do things differently and make some adjustments defensively.”
Along with drawing 10 walks, the Lady Lions collected five hits – two by Allen and one each by Burks, Mares, and Romero.
Brownwood will face Decatur in second-round playoff action next weekend at a time, date and place to determined.
“Decatur is a fierce ball team, but they’re not having the success of previous years where they would beat teams 30-0,” Munguia said. “We think we can contend with them since we’ve hit off such good pitching and faced such difficult batters this year.”
