Santa Rosa Academy softball ends their season after losing 11-17 to Granite Hills High School.
After winning their league championship against San Jacinto Academy 10-0 on their senior night, the Santa Rosa Academy traveled an hour and a half to play in the first round of the Division VI southern sectional championship.
“It should be a really good game” stated Head Coach Rachelle Aguirre. “We are a pretty evenly matched team, they’re [Granite Hills] first in their league, we’re first in ours so it really just comes down to who wants it more.”
Santa Rosa Academy softball had a goal from the very beginning, making it past the first round of CIF. For the past 6 years, the SRA softball team has won their league, made it to CIF, took the lead in the beginning half of the game and unfortunately by the 6th inning, managed to give up the runs scored that would later end their season short.
“I think what happens is, in our league we don’t get to play that good of a team so we’ll usually score so many runs that we don’t have to play 7 innings because of the mercy rule. It’s hard when you go from playing teams that aren’t equally matched with us and you mercy them in 5 innings to playing a really competitive team and having to keep momentum for 7 innings. It’s a lot on the pitching staff and the players so during practices we really try to build up that stamina from the start.” said Coach Aguirre
However to make this goal possible, it had to start from the moment the girls hit the field way back in January. Due to getting a late start and tryouts not happening until early January, the girls only had a little over a month to prepare for their first tournament.
“We went from no practices to practicing three times a week for 2 hours a day, we do have to share a field with the boys so communication between both head coaches was super important.” stated Aguirre
As soon as February hit, it was go, go, go. The girls played in the STU Penner 2025 tournament and despite going 1-3, it was an opportunity to play bigger and better teams. The sole purpose of this tournament was to see exactly what the team needed to work on to prepare for CIF.
March 3, 2025 the softball team played their very first league game against Desert Christian Academy and managed to take their first league win and season win, 16-3. This was the start of a repeating undefeated season, until it wasn’t. On May 2, 2025 the SRA softball team lost their very first league game against Hamilton High School, the same team that just 2 weeks before, had lost to SRA 10-2.
“That game was a really good game. We were up the entire game, two of our seniors had home runs, #8 Madeline “Goose” Hillyer hit a shot over the fence and #55 Lisa-Marie Cante had an in the park homerun. Our other senior, #23 Kadence Bernard pitched a beautiful game but what cost us were the little things. Routine plays weren’t made, we left runners on, watching too many strikes go by. We had some big defensive plays but the typical things that we would go over during practice just weren’t being made.” said Coach Aguirre
Following that specific game, the practices intensified. Base running drills were happening, hitting many times throughout the week, fundamental plays were being drilled into each of the players heads to prevent a game like the Hamilton one from happening again.
Come senior night against their league rivals, San Jacinto Academy, it was crucial to these girls that this game would be won, not just for the seniors but for the league championship.
Senior night ended off strong with Kadence Bernard pitching five shutout innings, with 11 strikeouts, allowing no runs scored. Offensively, SRA scored a total of 10 runs over the course of five innings, starting off a rally in the second inning with five runs on the board. The Rangers clinched their league championship with a spot in the division six southern section regionals.
The girls made the trip to Granite Hills High School in Apple Valley, CA to fight for a spot in round two. Granite Hills won their league championship with a league record of 10-2 and a season record of 16-6.
The game started off good for the Rangers scoring 4 runs in the first inning and by the bottom of the third, SRA was up 9-1 with Madeline Hillyer and sophomore, Melina Ferrer both having homeruns in top of the third.
“It felt really good, especially to give our pitcher some relief on the mound. It kept the momentum going and allowed us to get a rally going” stated Hillyer, who had the first homerun of the game.
Things were looking good and with victory just in sight, the Rangers moved into the sixth inning with the score at 11-6, however the Rangers couldn’t hold up their five run lead and allowed 11 runs to be scored in the bottom of the sixth.
Going into the seventh, the Rangers couldn’t get their runs back and ended up leaving runners on with Paloma Pedini being the last out of the game. The Rangers ended their season 17-7 making it just short of their goal.
“It sucks for our seniors who have put so much into this team for us to once again barely make it. But we had a lot of good things, two homeruns in one inning, that was the highlight of the game. It was fun until it wasn’t, but our seniors are leaving behind a legacy.” said Aguirre
