SAN JOSE, CA -- Mitty hitters continually hit the ball up in their quarterfinal victory against Leigh, usually resulting in outs. So heading into their 11-1 victory against Hillsdale on Wednesday, the Monarchs got down.
"We've been working all week on just hitting down through the ball and not swinging at the high stuff," said Mitty leadoff hitter Haley Wymbs who went 2-for-4 with three runs batted in against Hillsdale.
"The game against Leigh we popped out with nine of the first 14 batters," Mitty coach Brian Yocke said. "Total we had about 20 pop-outs and that's just not enough pressure on the defense. Obviously some of those pop-ups might find gaps now and then but if they don't, they're easy plays."
Not much came easily on defense for Hillsdale on Wednesday against the line-drive-hitting Monarchs.
The Monarchs' victory sends them to the finals Saturday at PAL Stadium (time to be announced) for a long-awaited title-game rematch against Pioneer. Mitty defeated Pioneer 7-4 in last year's CCS Division II title game, but lost to the Mustangs 2-1 in a non-league game this season.
"Everybody has been hyping this game up since the second the game ended last year," said Yocke who will be coaching his last softball game at Mitty on Saturday before taking over the Monarch baseball job vacated by the retiring Bill Hutton. "The fact the girls didn't play into that hype and didn't listen to the noise and just stuck with the process, knowing they needed to play championship ball from Day 1 regardless of who we ended up playing makes me the most proud."
Pioneer, led by pitcher Holly Azevedo (27-0, 0.00 earned run average) and slugger Alex Luna, is 28-0 and ranked second in the MaxPreps national poll. Mitty (26-3) is unranked.
"We just try to put ourselves in a championship game position every single time we're on the field in practice," said Wymbs, who will play at Seattle University next season. "We always act as if we're about the play the best team in CCS, so a lot of it is putting ourselves in those game situations so that we're not nervous."
Employing its strategy of hitting the ball level or even down into the ground, Mitty seemed to find every vacant spot on the PAL Stadium field in the second inning as it sent 17 batters to the plate, collected six hits and took advantage of three Hillsdale errors, two walks and a hit batsmen.
By the time a fly out ended the second, Mitty had scored all 11 of its runs and had virtually ended the contest -- though three more innings had to be completed and the Monarchs had to have at least a 10-run lead for the game to be official.
Hillsdale scored its run in the third on a run-scoring ground out by Meagan Wells.
Wymbs and Lauren Lopez each had two hits in the inning -- Wymbs drove in three runs in the frame -- and Megan Nordin had a two-run single and Desiree Severance a two-run single -- as the Monarchs had their way against Hillsdale pitcher Eryn McCoy.
"I knew we were going to come out strong, but I didn't know it would be like that," Lopez said. "I was just trying to get on base and moving the runners to help my team."
Meantime there was not much pressure on the Mitty defense as pitchers Severance and Stephanie Kristo combined on a no-hitter, with Severance pitching the first three innings.
The outcome chagrined Hillsdale coach Randy Metheany, whose Knights (20-9) have made it to the semifinals four consecutive years, but have lost each time, including twice to Mitty.
"You've got to come to play in a game like this and we didn't really swing the bats the way we should have," Metheany said. "I feel like we should have hit (them) and we didn't."
Continued Metheany, the former Hillsdale multi-sports star: "We're in a tough division. You don't want to come down here and get beat. We haven't been able to come down here and play a solid game to get a W. That's disappointing. But by the same token we won the PAL. We played hard games -- I played the toughest schedule I could play to get us to prepare for this, but sometimes it just doesn't work out."
Besides Wymbs, Nordin and Lopez had two hits apiece for Mitty which on Saturday will be seeking its fourth section title in five years.
