Mansfield Lake Ridge dethrones defending champ Deer Park in softball state semifinals
Mansfield Lake Ridge continued to make softball history on Friday night.
The Eagles, the first Mansfield school to reach the UIL state softball tournament, exploded for six runs in the top of the fourth inning to dethrone defending 6A champ Deer Park, 8-4, in the Class 6A state semifinals at McCombs Field.
Lake Ridge (32-6), which had already made program history by reaching the fifth round for the first time, advanced to play for the 6A state championship against San Antonio O’Connor at 7 p.m. Saturday from McCombs Field.
“Hitting is contagious and that’s what we’ve been telling them all year,” Lake Ridge coach Bobbi Cruff said. “I knew we’d come around. This is our first time here. It was going to take us a little bit of time to get our feet wet. See what we’re trying to hit, locate pitches, drive what we wanted to hit.
“Once we were able to do that, we were able to make something happen”
Deer Park (40-5) starting pitcher Reanna Nieman shut down Lake Ridge through the first three innings while the Deer held a 2-0 lead.
Nieman nearly got out of the fourth, but with the Eagles on first and second with two outs, Maritza Arellano started a rally. She took a pitch that landed just inside the right field line to score a run and cut the lead to 2-1.
Oklahoma State commit Tia Warsop, perhaps the fastest player in the state, slapped a pitch to short and beat out the throw for an RBI single that tied the game at 2-2.
“We knew, two outs we just gotta get a hit and start a rally,” Warsop said. “Score, score, score, and it was the right place in the lineup.”
Next pitch and Paris Johnson hit a towering shot to the left field wall for the go-ahead two-run double and 4-2 lead.
The runs continued when Kassidy Chance hit a long fly over the center-fielder’s head for a 5-2 lead. Brooklyn Morris hit a high fly just past third base that gave Deer Park trouble and Chance scored to give Lake Ridge a 6-2 lead.
“My first two at bats I didn’t do as great so I just needed to make the slightest adjustment,” Chance said. “I found the right pitch and drove it over the center-fielder’s head.”
Lake Ridge freshman Avery Hoang responded with a five-pitch fourth inning and the Eagles added two more runs in the fifth on a Gabi Wilson RBI single to left center and Warsop’s fourth hit of the night.
Warsop went over 80 hits this season, 81, to lead the Dallas-Fort Worth area. She tied a UIL state tournament record with four hits in a single game by going 4 for 5 (for any classification).
Maggie Miller went 2 for 3 and Arellano went 2 for 4 with an RBI and run scored for Lake Ridge.
“Seeing them score all those runs made me relax a little. I felt like I had less pressure on me,” Hoang said.
Deer Park got a pair back on a two-run home run from Lorelei Graham that went past the left field wall to bring the score to 8-4 in the bottom of the fifth inning.
The Deer scored one run in the first and one in the third.
They opened the bottom of the first inning with the bases loaded, but Hoang managed to limit the damage to only an RBI walk.
Hoang improved to 18-1 on the season from the circle.
She allowed three earned runs on eight hits with one strikeout and three walks in seven innings.
“There’s something magical about her. She showed that today,” Cruff said. “We’ve been getting out of those very crucial innings all year. I knew if we could get out of that inning with only one run, we could come back and push runs across and make it happen for us.”
This story was originally published June 3, 2022 at 9:33 PM.