SUNRISE SOFTBALL: Falcons finally solve Rams’ ace, claim region title

It was no secret that Foothill’s softball team had struggled to hit against Rancho this season.

The Falcons managed only five runs on 13 hits in the teams’ first three meetings.

Yet, Foothill coach Tom Mayes wasn’t a bit surprised to see his team explode offensively Saturday.

The host Falcons racked up 33 hits in two games and stunned the Rams 12-2 in the first game and 12-10 in the second to win the Sunrise Region title. Foothill (23-15) will participate in the Division I state tournament, which begins Thursday at UNLV.

Rancho ace Samantha Pochop struck out 34 Falcons in 20 innings in three games. But on Saturday, Foothill didn’t bite on Pochop’s normally lethal riseball and picked on her curveball, often slicing it to the opposite field for hits.

“Mentally, they knew they could do it,” Mayes said. “We saw some similar speed and high stuff from Coronado’s pitcher (on Friday), so that may have helped a little bit. They all talked about it, and they knew that if she got a strike on us, she was going to try to come in high, then try to keep it low and away.”

Foothill pounded out 17 hits off Pochop in the first game, then collected 16 more against Kat Anthony and Pochop in a wild second game.

“We struggled so much in the regular season and we fought so much that it just came to the point where we were like a sleeping giant, and we just woke up,” said Falcons junior first baseman Sarah Maddox, who went 6-for-8 with three doubles, two home runs, four runs and seven RBIs in the two games Saturday.

Rancho built leads of 4-0 and 6-2 in the winner-take-all second game before the Falcons rallied with five runs on five hits in the bottom of the fifth inning.

Foothill put the first five runners on base in the inning and brought all five home to take a 7-6 lead.

But Rancho (26-9) fought back to tie the game on Yvette Sanchez’s one-out single in the top of the sixth. Kayla Coles followed with an RBI single, and Jahnae Davis-Houston hit a two-run, inside-the-park home run into the right-field corner to give the Rams a 10-7 lead.

“We’ve come back from bigger deficits before,” Maddox said. “We knew that it was possible to do it again.”

The Falcons simply went back to work in the bottom of the inning, cutting the lead to 10-8 on Kaitlyn Enzweiler’s RBI single. Maddox started a two-out rally with a game-tying, two-run home run, and after a Rancho error kept the inning alive, Daryan Meade and Hannah Stevens each added an RBI single to put Foothill ahead 12-10.

“When they get into games like this, it just always seems to come from different people,” Mayes said. “But they just don’t want to give up.”

Kayla King, who went the distance in the opener, retired the side in order in the seventh to complete her second win of the day.

Alexa Campbell was 4-for-4 with two doubles for Foothill in the second game.

Rancho will have a chance to win its way into the state tournament when it faces Centennial in a play-in game at 3:30 p.m. Monday at Bishop Gorman.