Sunday, January 20, 2002
[ PREP SOFTBALL ]
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Just when it appeared Castle might loosen Mililani's grip on the Oahu Interscholastic Association softball crown, the Trojans tightened their fist and claimed the league championship for the fourth straight year. Mililani speeds past
Castle for OIA crownBy Jason Kaneshiro
jkaneshiro@starbulletin.comMililani, which had been held without a hit through six innings, scored two runs in the top of the seventh to pull out a 2-0 win over Castle yesterday in the OIA title game at windy Kapolei High School field.
"It's like I told (the players), 'You guys have been here, you know what it takes to win. Just do your job and just have fun,' " Mililani coach Mike Okimoto said.
Just as they have all season, the Trojans capitalized on their opponent's mistakes to earn the win. Three Castle errors in the seventh helped Mililani break a scoreless tie with the decisive runs.
Brittney Shimamoto, Mililani's fastest player, reached first base on a bunt single to open the inning and moved to second on a throwing error. She advanced to third on a bunt by Adrienne Kasaoka and scored on Charity Senas' line-drive single to center field.
"I was worried about keeping their speed off the bases," Castle coach Jon Berinobis said. "If you follow the line scores of Mililani's games, the other teams made a lot of errors and their speed created a lot of that."
Senas came around to score an insurance run when a pop-up by Erika Au was lost in the sun and fell safely in the Castle infield.
Senas, a sophomore shortstop, said the team's experience in tight games this year helped them deal with yesterday's late-inning pressure.
"The whole season we've been in that position," Senas said. "We've been close this whole year."
Two runs was more than enough for Mililani pitcher Miki Asamura, who picked up her second win of the playoffs. The junior gave up two hits and struck out nine in a complete-game performance.
She fell behind in the count to just five of the 24 batters she faced and walked none.
"I was hitting the outside really good today and the umpire was calling it low, so I kept a lot of my balls low and outside," said Asamura, who earned the win over Pearl City in last year's OIA title game.
"She hit her spots well," Berinobis said. "She kept the middle of our order in check, she kept the ball away from our strength and was very poised on the mound."
Castle's Lia Pedrina matched Asamura for six innings. Pedrina kept the Trojans hitless and retired 14 consecutive hitters through the middle innings.
It appeared the game might go deep into extra innings when the Trojans started their rally by calling for Shimamoto to try to bunt for a base hit.
"We had to try to put a runner on base, that's the main thing," Okimoto said. "I was just hoping B.J. would get on, because she's the fastest we have. If B.J. gets on we can do something.
"That's all we were looking for, to get that one run."
Said Berinobis: "Once she got on I knew we were in trouble. It was going to boil down to that, one of the teams had to put the ball down and somebody's going to throw it away, unfortunately it was us."
Mililani will be the OIA's top seed in the upcoming Chevron State Softball Championship and will have a bye into the quarterfinals.
Castle, Kailua, Leilehua and Campbell make up the rest of the OIA's entrants in the state tournament.
"It's going to be a big task in states," Okimoto said. "The good thing about it is we get the first-round bye. You have to play three games and you have to excel three days in a row."
At Kapolei H.S. field
Mililani 000 000 2 -- 2 2 1 Castle 000 000 0 -- 0 2 5 Miki Asamura and Erika Au; Lia Pedrina and Anuhea Young. W -- Asamura. L -- Pedrina.
Leading hitters -- Mil: Charity Senas 1-3, game-winning RBI.
Third-place game
Kailua 4, Leilehua 3: Courtney Kessell recovered from a rough start to strike out eight Leilehua batters and pick up the win for the Surfriders in the OIA third-place game.
Kessell walked a pair of batters and gave up two runs in the first inning, but settled down to keep the Mules off the scoreboard until the sixth.
Kailua cut into Leilehua's lead in the bottom of the first on Tanisha Milca's RBI single. The Surfriders tied the game in the third when Danielle Young scored on a throwing error, and took the lead later that inning on Sharde Marshall's single to right field to score Milca.
They added an insurance run in the fifth on Deja Cavaco's sacrifice fly to plate Loke Lastimosa.
Leilehua cut the gap to a single run in the sixth when Alexis San Nicolas scored on an error. The Mules put runners on second and third with no outs, but Kessell got a pop out, strike out and a fly out to end the threat.
Kessell then set the Mules down in order in the seventh to end the game.
At Kapolei H.S. field
Leilehua 200 001 0 -- 3 5 5 Kailua 102 101 x -- 4 5 2 Alexis San Nicolas and Heidi Garcia; Courtney Kessell and Kainoa Hughes. W -- Kessell. L -- San Nicolas.
Leading hitters -- Lei: Ericka Ige 2-2, RBI; Heidi Garcia RBI. Kail: Tanisha Milca 1-3, run, RBI; Sharde Marshall 2-3, RBI.
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