Millbrae Mischief softball wins 12U Cal State Games title

San Clemente got off to a hot start in the championship game, scoring twice in the top of the first inning. But Millbrae took the lead in the bottom of the third when Alyssa Peñas drilled a three-run home run. Millbrae was poised to claim the championship when it scored an addition run in the bottom of the fifth for a 4-2 advantage.

But San Clemente rallied. It scored twice in the of the sixth inning to tie the game, but Millbrae responded with a walk-off win in the bottom half of the inning. Leeanna Patolo led off the inning by getting hit by a pitch before Sydney Chu singled to right.

With two outs, Jolie Wong came up the plate. Wong had been drilled in the ribs earlier in the game and sat out a couple of innings before returning to the lineup in the fourth.

Which surprised Coach Peñas.

“Hit her square in the ribs,” said Mischief’s head coach EJ Peñas. “Just my gut feeling, but I thought she would be out the rest of the game. … Typically, she’s a magnet for the ball. … But she was visibly shaken and crying (this time).”

It didn’t hinder her at-bat in the bottom of the sixth, however. With both runners moving up a base on a wild pitch, Wong smacked a double to drive in Patolo with the championship-winning run.

“It was fairly wild,” Coach Peñas said of the Mischief’s celebration. “If you know [Wong] she is very stoic. But I did see a big smile on her. It was quite poetic to come back in (to the game) and get the game-winning hit.”

The hit made a winner of starting pitcher Gina Hillman, who had shared time in the circle with Bailey Beauchemin throughout the summer, both of whom are fairly new to pitching.

“It was one of the main reasons we were classified as a ‘C’ (team), because our pitchers were fairly new (to pitching),” Coach Peñas said.

While Hillman and Beauchemin shared duties for most of the tournament season, Peñas turned to Hillman for the championship game. While she struggled at times, allowing four runs on 10 hits, she went the distance, kept her team in the game and enabled the Mischief to pull out the win at the end.

“She has a natural drop ball and she has the mental fortitude to weather what the position calls for. There’s a lot of pressure (on the pitcher),” Coach Peñas said. “She induced a lot of ground balls. We knew that our team wasn’t a strikeout kind of team, so we would have to rely on our defense.

“Some of those, quote unquote hits, weren’t real hits. … Some of those balls were booted. For the most part, Gina did not give up hard hit balls.”

Five previous Mischief squads had qualified and played in the Cal State Games, which is run by USA Softball, and none had won. Coach Peñas didn’t think the 2022 team would be the first to win the title, alluding to the team’s youth. Youth and relatively inexperienced is not usually a recipe for success. But Peñas said the team bought into the coaching staff’s focus on the fundamentals and as the team continued to get better, their confidence began to rise.

“We practiced three days a week,” Coach Peñas said. “The girls all bought into the system and they started to believe they could succeed, which is all I could really ask for.”

The Mischief lost only two game in the two qualifying tournaments for the state games. Millbrae went 4-1 in the Battle of the Bay regional qualifier, which was hosted by Millbrae Girls Softball Association, beating Redwood City Wicked in the championship.

That qualified the Mischief for the 14-team regional tournament at the Twins Creek Complex in Sunnyvale. Again, Millbrae advanced to the finals, again, against Redwood City Wicked. This time, Wicked got the better of Millbrae.

“[Redwood City is] kind of like our rival,” Coach Peñas said. “The previous tournament, we met them in the championship game and we beat them. It’s kind of a back and forth.”

But the second-place finish qualified Millbrae for the California State Games and the Mischief saved its best for last, going a perfect 5-0 in winning the title.

“We were a fairly young team and my expectations were to, really, improve through practice and playing competitive teams,” Coach Peñas said. “In all honesty, I didn’t expect this to happen. We ended up winning three tournaments and placing in five of the six tournaments we played.

“Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised.”

Editor's note: this story has been updated to correct Jolie Wong's name.