The Cerritos College softball team moved on from the first round of playoffs to the Super Regionals were the winner will play for the CCCAA state championship.
The Falcons started a best of a three series against No. 12 seed Southwestern on Saturday, May 7.
The first game ended in a 7-0 sweep of Southwestern lead by three home runs by third baseman Jenny Navarro, first basemen Kylee Brown,and outfielder Mackenzie Kutzke.
In the second inning Brown stepped up to the plate and hit a home run to put her team up 2-0.
It wasn’t until the fourth inning till Navarro got her home run and put her team up 3-0.
Navarro said of her home run, “It felt good but this season that wasn’t our focus, we set ourselves to focus on getting out 60 feet and the home runs will come later.”
Cerriotos went on to get two more runs unearned, a homer by Kutzke, and an RBI by second basemen Jenny Collazo.
Collazo said she was proud of her teams success, “I feel we played extremely well, we came out determined to get that win and we just dominated, we came out with a completely different aggressiveness and we just went after it.”
Game 2 was on Sunday, May 8, and the Falcons were ready to play.
Collazo added that her team knew it had to show up because it was playoffs, “With the season I guess that you know that there’s a game that comes after the one you are playing that day, in playoffs, the way you perform can alter whether or not you see another game.”
In this game Cerritos started off on fire, scoring one run in the first inning and scoring five runs in the second inning.
The five runs in the second inning were all from small ball singles from four different players.
The women went on to score seven more runs the rest of the game with the final score being 13-5 in five innings.
“We all felt great we came in thinking of a new season and we showed up as a new team, it was the best feeling,” said Navarro of her teams victory.
Navarro also said that her team approached the game differently because it was playoffs, “It was different in the way we approached this game compared to how we were approaching games in season.
“The past two games were a different Cerritos team, we played with honor and pride and we finished everything and never settled as well as always pushing back if the other team scored and then we went back into the dugout, seen how many the other team would score and then we would tell each other, ‘Hey we’re chasing three’ and work on getting those runs back,” Navarro added.
Now the women look ahead to play the reigning state champions Palomar who are seeded No. 4, but the ladies haven’t beaten Palomar all season.
On January 30 the women lost 4-2 and on April 20 they lost 4-3.
Navarro said this is going to be a good game, “It’s another game for us, we’ve seen everything they can do and we’ve always beat ourselves by not finishing when we played them so this time around it’s going to be a good game.”
Collazo added that the team is ready, “We are a whole different team now, we have heart and fight in us and we are going to use those things on Friday, we’re working hard this week during practice to prepare ourselves both mentally and physically.
“After that, we are going to go in and fight, we’re ready,” finished Collazo.
The Falcons look to continue their journey to the State Championship on Friday, May 13.
