Hillsdale softball completes dream run to Nor Cal crown

They carried that momentum into the No. 1 seed in the CIF Northern California Regional Division III bracket and followed a similar blue print: score first — and in some cases, last — and get stellar pitching and defense.

All of that culminated Saturday afternoon as the Knights hosted second-seeded Cardinal Newman in the Nor Cal Division III championship game. Not only did Hillsdale score first, the Knights also scored last, manufacturing a run in the bottom of the seventh inning to come away with a 1-0 victory and the program’s first Nor Cal softball championship.

It is the third team in Hillsdale athletic history to earn a Northern California championship, joining the 1997 boys’ basketball team and the 2021 girls’ volleyball squad.

“A lot of teams at Hillsdale have come close (to winning championships),” said junior left fielder Taylor O’Mahony, who had the game-winning hit to drive in senior shortstop Mia DeMartini. “At the beginning of the season our main goal was to win league (Hillsdale finished third). Who would have thought we’d win CCS and Nor Cal?

“I’m really overwhelmed.”

While Hillsdale (21-9-1) was outhit by Cardinal Newman (24-7), 3-2, it was the Knights who got two hits in an inning to drive in the only run of the game. Cardinals pitcher Callie Howard carried a no-hitter into the seventh, starting the game by striking out the side looking in the first inning.

Howard finished with eight strikeouts.

Hillsdale’s freshman third baseman G Brum drew a two-out walk in the second to break up any kind of perfect-game thinking, and a walk to O’Mahony leading off the bottom of the fifth was the Knights’ only other base runner through the first six innings.

But you could see the Knights’ swings were getting better as the game went along and they finally came through in their final at-bat. DeMartini, the No. 3 hitter, had the hardest hit ball of the game, as she drove an 0-1 pitch into the right-center field gap for a leadoff double.

That’s where Hillsdale’s execution came into play. Lola Jones, sophomore starting pitcher and cleanup hitter, put down a sacrifice bunt to move DeMartini to third and bring up O’Mahony.

After taking a first-pitch strike, O’Mahony squared around to bunt, but didn’t offer at the pitch as the Cardinal Newman catcher came up firing to try to catch DeMartini wandering off third.

Cardinal Newman head coach Bill Vreeland came out to argue batter interference, but after the home plate umpire conferred with two other colleagues, it was ruled no interference.

“I got the squeeze sign … I didn’t execute very well,” O’Mahony said.

On the next pitch, O’Mahony smack a comebacker off the glove of Howard and it trickled to her left. The entire Cardinal Newman infield scrambled to the ball, but DeMartini easily beat the throw home, sliding across the plate before leaping to her feet and charging down the first-base line to celebrate with O’Mahony.

“I knew if we let the game progress … that the ball would fall when we needed it to,” said Hillsdale’s first-year head coach Eryn Butcher.

Despite the winning run scoring, O’Mahony kept her head and crossed the first-base bag before celebrating.

“I knew I could do it,” O’Mahony said. “I was just thinking I need to bust my [butt] to get to first base.”

It was the second game in a row that Hillsdale walked off with a Nor Cal win. Brum had the game-winning hit in the bottom of the eighth inning to beat Liberty-Madera 3-2 in the semifinals Thursday.

The championship game followed a similar pattern, just without all the scoring as both pitchers had their best outings of the season. Jones has taken her pitching to another level in a pair of Nor Cal wins as she improved to 15-5 on the season and finished with a 2.01 ERA.

“I really came into this game knowing my teammates would do everything for me,” Jones said. “I was just locked in.”

Jones gave up a leadoff hit to Nicole DiMarco, but struck out the next two batters and then got a web gem from Brum at third to end the inning. Jones would go on to retire the side in order in both the second and third innings and got the leadoff batter in the fourth to run her streak to 10 batters in row, coming up with five of her seven strikeouts.

Jordyn Johnson finally broke the string with a one-out single in the fourth and the only other hit was Cienna Alvarez single in the top of the seventh.

No Cardinals runner managed to make it to second base as the Knights’ defense was mostly flawless. They did have some problems with popups in the notorious swirling Hillsdale winds, but first baseman Maddie Peña made a nice play coming down the first-base line for a catch in the fourth, while Brum made a juggling grab in foul territory in the seventh.

“Nails,” was how Butcher described Jones’ performance. “She’s always good, but she put a little extra on it today.

“I knew [this game] would go something like this.”