Portales splits in first day of state softball

RIO RANCHO – The Portales Lady Rams’ winning streak came to an end at 12 games Wednesday afternoon, when they lost their second game of the day to Silver 9-4 in the Class 4A softball tournament.

Portales (23-6), which defeated St. Michael’s 5-4 in their Wednesday opener, can still win a state championship. But they now have to run the table for five games — three consolation bracket games Thursday, beginning at 10 a.m. against Kirtland Central, and a pair of games starting noon Friday against either Silver or top seed Robertson.

“The truth is,” Portales coach Robbie Crowley said, “if we played our game that we’ve played during our winning streak, we would have been fine today. We just started to let things get to us. We can’t do that. We’re at a point now where we just have to play, whoever it is. We have to just play.”

The Colts and Cardinals, meanwhile, are both just two wins away from the state championship.

In the opener, Portales took a commanding 4-0 lead through the first five innings. Eighth-grade pitcher Wendy Baeza had struck out seven of her 10 total batters before Alisha Alverez put St. Michael’s on the board following an RBI single by Lindsey Glidewell. Despite the Lady Horsemen loading the bases, Baeza struck out the final two batters to end the inning with the Rams leading 4-1.

“She did really well,” Portales coach Robbie Crowley said of Baeza’s pitching. “She did her job and took care of business. She did what we needed her to do.”

Baeza ran into trouble in the top of the seventh inning when the Rams committed their only two errors, which helped the Horsemen pull even with two of their three runs coming unearned.

In the seventh, Ramirez got on base with a double, her only hit of the game. Following her was junior outfielder Sky Marianito, who hit a double of her own to drive in Ramirez for the victory.

“We didn’t tell them anything different in the bottom of the seventh (inning),” Crowley said. “They just needed to go and hit like they needed to do but we definitely battled. St. Mike’s is a good team. They made us battle to win this one.”

Marianito finished the game 3-4 with 2 RBIs and a run of her own when she scored in the third inning. Senior Tori Cordova went 2-3 and sophomore Alexis Garcia hit a solo home run, just the 10th team homer this season, in the second inning for Portales’ first run of the game.

In the second game, the Lady Rams faced No. 6 Silver (20-9), who beat Hope Christian 2-0 in its morning game. Just like with the St. Michael’s game, Portales built up an early lead, only to see it vanish in the later innings.

Portales jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first inning after Ramirez hit her first of two home runs in the game. The Rams added another run in the fourth inning when Garcia hit her second home run of the day. Then everything went wrong as Silver put up five runs in the next inning after sending 10 batters to the box. Silver would then add to their lead getting three runs in the sixth and one final run in the seventh inning.

“We were doing good up 3-0 and just gave up some hits,” Crowley said. “Silver put together some hits.”