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Coahoma softball ends Lamesa’s historic season, sweeps region final series
LAMESA — Fans began lining up outside the Lamesa Baseball & Softball Park around 10 a.m., a good three hours before the first pitch was scheduled.
Vanessa Hernandez knew the Lamesa community was going to show up for the deciding game of the Region I-3A championship series. Stands were packed to the gills, noisemakers on hand for the lot. They were there to see the Golden Tors in their first region final ever.
Coahoma, though, has been in this situation before. Loaded crowds weren’t new to the Bulldogettes. It was evident Saturday afternoon which of the two teams had been on that stage before.
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After winning the first game of the series 10-0 late Friday night at home, Coahoma turned around 14 hours later to finish the sweep, ending Lamesa’s history-making campaign with a 14-1, five-inning win to return to the state softball tournament.
The Bulldogettes will get another crack at success in Austin after falling in the state title game a year ago.
“It’s one of the hardest things to do,” Coahoma coach Alexander Orosco said of returning to state. “And I say that mainly because the target gets bigger and bigger and bigger. This year the one thing that is hard to prepare for is everybody’s gonna give you their best. Everybody wants to be the team that gives you an L, so it was tough in that sense.”
Lamesa was the latest team trying to hand Coahoma a loss, and needed to do it twice on Saturday to keep the season going.
An hours-long rain delay that saw Friday’s opener conclude after 11 p.m. put an interesting spin on things. Hannah Wells pitched a five-inning no-hitter in Coahoma’s win. She then turned around Saturday and did her damage at the plate.
Wells went 4 for 4 with a two-run home run — which hit off the scoreboard in left field — and struck out all three batters in her fifth-inning relief appearance in the circle.
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“They were gonna give everything they had,” Lamesa coach Vanessa Hernandez said, “and that’s all I can ever ask for.”
Amaya Vasquez got the first hit of the series for Lamesa with a double in the bottom of the second inning. The Golden Tors got on the scoreboard with an RBI single from Zoey Sifuentes. The 7-1 deficit seemed manageable if things broke Lamesa’s way.
What the hosts couldn’t afford was to give up a big inning. Coahoma went on a two-out rally to score seven in the top of the fifth to put the game in run-rule territory. Wells fanned each of Lamesa’s three batters to end things.
“We’ll give credit where credit is due,” Hernandez said. “We just didn’t capitalize when we had runners in scoring position like we probably should have.”
Coahoma extended its winning streak to 23 games with the series sweep and now turns its attention back to state.
“I think the difference was last year when we ended up in the final, now that we had a chance to win, these girls are hungry,” Orosco said. “This is no exaggeration. All summer from probably the week after state and all summer, all fall, all spring, there were no breaks. There was a hunger and I think you need that in order to do this again.”
Region I-3A championship softball
Game 2: Coahoma 14, Lamesa 1 (5)
Coahoma 340 07 — 14 14 0
Lamesa 010 00 — 1 4 0
Makayla Calvio and Hannah Wells (5). Laila Vasquez. W — Calvio. L — Vasquez. 2B — Coahoma, Christian Everett, Nevaeh Kerby and Baylor Wright; Lamesa, Amaya Vasquez. HR — Coahoma, Shae Lang and Wells.
