Capuchino rallies for CCS softball title

Capuchino lived up to its seeding, showing the grit of a champion as the Mustangs rallied from a 3-1 deficit with a six-run sixth to beat fourth-seeded Milpitas 7-3 and clinch the program’s seventh CCS championship Saturday morning at San Jose City College.

“Last year was supposed to be it,” said Capuchino head coach Tanya Borgello said of the 2023 squad that tie for the Bay Division title, only to be bumped into the Open Division and a first-round loss to end the season.

I feel like we were the underdog (this year),” Borghello said. “People didn’t see us coming.”

With the win, the Mustangs advance to the Northern California regional tournament. Capuchino is the seventh seed in Division and will be on the road at No. 2 Cardinal Newman-Santa Rosa (24-5) at 4 p.m. Tuesday.

The championship is the second CCS crown this week for Capuchino this week as the baseball team won its first-ever section championship with a 1-0 decision over Santa Cruz in the Division V title game Thursday night at San Jose’s Excite Ballpark.

And there is no doubt the Capuchino (17-11) softball team earned its first title in 13 years. Lola Sierra was, again, fantastic in the pitcher’s circle, spinning a 10-strikeout performance while allowing one earned run on four hits.

The offense then came alive, finally, in the bottom of the sixth as the Mustangs scored six runs on four hits, taking advantage of a Spartans’ error. Capuchino was making solid contact throughout the game, striking out just once. Sierra said that helped keep the Mustangs’ confidence up at the plate.

“The fact everybody was making contact meant sooner or later we’ll take advantage,” Sierra said.

In the deciding inning it wasn’t so much the hits Capuchino collected, but just the Mustangs’ overall approach at the plate. Nadia Keishk, the Mustang’s No. 9 hitter, got the party started with a single, followed by an infield hit from Lily Thomas at the top of the order. Liz Do put down what was supposed to be a sacrifice bunt, but the second baseman covering at first couldn’t handle the throw. Do was safe and Keishk came around to score to cut the Milpitas lead to 3-2.

Sierra drew a walk on a full count to load the bases and bring up cleanup hitter Avery Motroni, a junior whose blast in the bottom of the second tied the game at 1-all. She came up in the sixth and ended up fouling out to first base for the first out of the inning.

But Dana Motroni, a freshman, picked big sis up by drawing a walk to drive in Thomas with the game-tying run. With the bases still juiced, Capuchino first baseman Lina Ngaluafe came up and also drew an RBI walk to give the Mustangs their first lead of the game, 4-3.

A Kira Forsberg groundout to second drove in the fourth run of the inning and No. 8 hitter Marayah Govea put an exclamation point on the uprising with a two-run single deep to center field.

“[Our rally] was less on their pitcher and more on our batters really seeing balls and strikes,” Sierra said. “The team showed a lot of discipline at the plate.”

Borghello also said it was the culmination of a lineup that had steadily gotten better and and more productive as the season went along. Borghello took notice that it was the bottom of the order that started the Mustangs’ game-winning rally.

“(Sierra) and Avery held us in the game all year long,” Borghello said. “Toward the end of the season, the other girls stepped up.”

After that, Sierra ended things with a 1-2-3 top of the seventh, with centerfielder Keishk squeezing the final out of the game.

It marked the 14th win of the season for Sierra and one of her best. Stoic on the mound, you wouldn’t know if the Mustangs were up or down. She certainly didn’t show any emotion after Milpitas’ cleanup hitter, Chloe Cabrera, hammered the first pitch of the second inning over the fence to put the Spartans up 1-0.

Sierra’s answer? She struck out the side.

“She never gets mad,” Borghello said. “She’s always positive and she never shows emotion.”

Sierra said her unflappability stems from a sort of trance she goes into when pitching. While she is fully aware of everything going on around her, she said as she goes into her windup, she is focused 100% on that pitch.

“My friends all like to say I go to ‘La La land,’ or actually, ‘Lola Land,’ since that’s my name,” Sierra said. “I didn’t really change my approach (after the home run). Avery, my catcher, definitely had an influence on those three strikeouts.”

That gave her four Ks through two innings and she would go on to have at least one an inning the rest of the way.

That one mistake, however, saw the Mustangs staring at an early 1-0 deficit and as early as it was, it also that short-lived as Capuchino answered in similar fashion in the bottom of the frame.

Avery Motroni, who led the PAL in home runs with eight this season, led off the second inning by slamming a 2-1 pitch off the scoreboard behind the right-field fence for an opposite-field, game-tying homer.

“That definitely started us off,” Sierra said.

Added Borghello: “That was huge.”

After that, Sierra and her Milpitas counterpart Priyah Quinonez matched zeros until the Spartans took advantage of a Mustangs’ error, parlaying it into two unearned runs in the top of the fifth. After a flyout, Milpitas’ Brooke Vogel reached on an error. Bella Garcia followed by leggin out a bunt single of her own and the Spartans were in business.

Sierra got a strikeout for the second out to turn the lineup over. Milpitas leadoff hitter Destiny Solis came up and laced a 2-2 pitch down the right-field line to drive in Vogel, with Garcia moving to third.

She would end up scoring an an errant pickoff attempt at third base to put Milpitas (19-10) six outs away from their first-ever CCS title.

Instead, it was the Mustangs celebrating the title.

“This championship isn’t just the work of this team, to take nothing away from what we did. But this is the work of last year’s seniors and the seniors before that,” Sierra said.