Bottom of the fifth inning, trailing 3-2, and the Santa Clara Bruins had leadoff hitter Victoria Calvillo at the plate. The 3-2 pitch came in over the inner half, and Calvillo spun on it, driving it into the right-center-field gap. With the ball rolling towards the fence, the only question in this writer’s mind was whether or not Calvillo would end up at second or stretch it to a triple. As it turned out, that was the wrong “only question” to think about. The appropriate question should have been, is Calvillo going to drop anchor at third, or is she going to get the green light to try and score? Calvillo would indeed get the green light from Head Coach Julie Kawamoto and then proceeded to slide home safely with a head-first dive. The game was tied!
“I got a fastball on the inside, and I was able to hit one right where I wanted to place it because I saw the right side was pretty open,” chimed Calvillo on the pitch she drove for the most entertaining type of home run in the game of baseball and softball.
“I got the go sign, but I also thought I was gonna get held up,” continued Calvillo when asked about picking up her third-base coach. “‘I was like ‘OK! That’s my cue to go!’ And I booked it as fast as I could, saw the catcher getting set up, and that’s when I dove for the plate.”
Coach Kawamoto admitted postgame that she has had some regrets in the past about holding Calvillo up at third in similar situations. This time around, she wasn’t going to hesitate.
“At North Salinas, I held her up, and I was mad at myself for not sending her,” chuckled Coach Kawamoto. “This time I was in the right place to kind of see who got the ball. The girl hadn’t turned yet, and she was just coming around third, and I was like she’s got this.”
Got it, she did, as it is not hyperbole to say Calvillo has track-star speed. The senior has been successfully competing in track at the same time as she plays her softball season. Her first career inside-the-park home run lit up the Bruins dugout. Santa Clara would tack on three more runs in the fifth and another five in the sixth, eventually cruising to a 11-4 victory over the team that had beat them 20-10 earlier in the season.
Gisele Valdez delivered a terrific performance from the pitcher’s circle, while four of the final eight RBI for the Bruins came off the bat of Cita Chavez.
On the other side of the diamond, the Firebirds were in the game for the first five innings, in large part due to a couple of key plays from starting pitcher Charlene Hiek. The sophomore knocked down a wicked line drive that came right back at her in the circle, but she knocked down the waist-high drive and calmly threw to first for the last out of the inning, saving a pair of runs in the second. Hiek would later score the go-ahead run in the top of the fifth after having launched a one-out double to left.
Fremont freshman Isabella Poo also starred for Fremont, smacking a line drive into the gap in right-center field that tied the score 1-1 in the fourth.
Santa Clara improves to 9-2 in league, while Fremont falls back to 9-3 in a tightly contested race in the El Camino.
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