(Seguin) – Vanessa Sanchez drove in Layla Salazar with the walk-off RBI single to cap a five-run seventh inning rally and give Seguin softball a 6-5 home win over Buda-Johnson on Friday in District 26-5A.
Johnson’s Amia Torrez had a no-hitter working and a 5-1 lead with one out in the bottom of the seventh, but Seguin’s Allie Kubena and Allie Mize broke up the no-no with consecutive singles. Summer Flores reached base on a bunt and Mize beat the throw to second to load the bases for the top of the lineup.
Ashlie Aguilar walked to drive in Kubena. Salazar launched a triple to left field, allowing Mize, Flores, and Aguilar to sprint home and tie the game.
Salazar hustled home to the applause of her teammates, coaches, and a raucos home crowd when Sanchez ripped a hard grounder past first base into shallow right field to end the game.
“We have a saying – be a goldfish,” Seguin head coach John Garcia said in the wake of his team’s late rally from the brink of a no-hitter. “Basically what that means is that a goldfish has about a 10 second memory span, and then it’s gone. We got that from Ted Lasso, so it’s not something we created. But it works, and when we first introduced it, they thought it was funny, but it’s serious, and they’ve taken it to heart, and they believe in it. We don’t have the pouting, the deflating, or anything like that. We stay up the whole time, and good things happen.”
The win is Seguin’s fifth straight and moves the Matadors to 8-4 in district play with an overall mark of 17-9. Seguin is tied with Kerrville-Tivy for the fourth and final playoff seed with four games left. The Matadors also knocked Johnson out of first place. Dripping Springs (10-2) now sits atop the standings with Johnson and New Braunfels-Canyon tied for third at 10-3 in district play.
Chloe Belicek drove in Aguilar with a sacrifice fly to give the Mats a 1-0 lead over Johnson in the first inning. The Jaguars responded with three runs in the third and a pair of unearned runs aided by Seguin errors in the sixth and seventh to take a 5-1 lead.
Sophomore left hander Madyson Schultze relieved Seguin starting pitcher in the second and went the rest of the way to earn the win in the circle. Schultze allowed the two unearned runs and five hits with two strikeouts in 5-2/3 innings, and stranded five Johnson runners in scoring position.
“Mady came in and just hit her spots,” Garcia said. “We don’t care about any fancy movement or anything like that. Just hit your spots, and hit your locations, and we were able to do that and execute, and the defense backed her up.”
“But to Kendall’s credit, and what everybody needs to know, she was hurt,” Garcia added. “She hurt herself, she realized that she couldn’t do it, that she needed to be pulled out, and she signaled to us from the field that she needed to be pulled. When you’ve got kids like that who put the team first, I can’t be more proud of that young lady.”
Seguin ended up chasing Torrez in the fifth inning and forcing Johnson to put reliever Kylie Goad in the circle. Salazar and Sanchez connected for the tying and game winning hits against Goad.
Garcia credits his lineup for adjusting to Torrez by swinging aggressively early in the count.
“That was kind of the consensus, that we needed to start swinging the bat, so you started to see a lot of first pitch swings, pop-ups, stuff like that,” the coach said. “Just keep making the adjusment, keep doing what you’re doing, keep putting the bat on the ball, and something good will happen. I didn’t realize we’d have to wait until the bottom of the seventh, but we’ll take it.”
“They’re a great team. Coach Snell is an amazing coach. I have so much respect for her, and to be able to get a win against them, that’s just big.”
The Matadors look to extend their winning streak to six games and avenge an earlier district loss for the third straight game on Tuesday when they host New Braunfels-Canyon at 7 p.m.