Softball: Riverside keeps OCC down

Joseph Boo

COSTA MESA - Unfortunately for Orange Coast College’s softball

team, Mother Nature could do no better than intermittent sprinkles Friday

afternoon. That meant the five runs visiting Riverside put up in the

first inning counted, and a 10-3 Orange Empire Conference loss went to

the Pirates in their second-to-last game of the season.

OCC (17-24, 6-14 in conference) could only hope a rainout would give it

another chance to remedy that first inning, where it gave the Tigers

(22-18, 9-10) numerous opportunities to score.

“It’s frustrating,” OCC Coach Rick Buonarigo said. “We made too many

mental mistakes. They weren’t physical mistakes. We just had too many

mental lapses on defense.”

The game’s very first batter, Riverside’s Jessica May, struck out on a

pitch in the dirt. The ball bounced away and May was on first. She later

scored on a single by Sarah Seldecke, who went 4 for 5 with three RBIs.

After a walk and an error, the Tigers’ Michelle Martin hit a run-scoring

ground ball to the shortstop, but a hesitant throw allowed her to reach

first safely. One walk and two singles drove in three more runs for

Riverside.

“They’re a good team,” Buonarigo said. “They took advantage of every one

of our mistakes, and good teams do that. We had games where we made the

same type of mistakes and got away with them, we even won a couple of

those games. But we couldn’t get away with them against Riverside.”

OCC cut Riverside’s lead in half in the first inning by taking advantage

of Tiger mistakes. Meredith Miles led off with a walk, Kristin Degree

reached on an error, and Renee Snyder singled to load the bases.

“We had a couple of good offensive performances,” Buonarigo said.

“Offensively, we did OK.”

Kimberly Guillen then walked to drive in the Pirates’ first run. Tasha

Thurmond hit a sharp grounder to second, where she was robbed by a diving

Crystal Bender. But that got another OCC run across. Angelia Valdez then

laid down a bunt that scored OCC’s third run.

The Pirates had runners on second and third in the second and fifth

inning, but they failed to score both times. Snyder hit a double in the

seventh for OCC’s only extra-base hit, but Riverside had a 10-3 lead by

then, scoring two runs in the sixth and seventh.

ORANGE EMPIRE CONFERENCE

Riverside 10, OCC 3

Riverside 501 002 2 - 10 13 2

OCC 300 000 0 - 3 4 1

Bermudez and Zapata; Ortega and Snyder. W - Bermudez, 21-15. L - Ortega,

12-19. 2B - Snyder (OCC), Saldecke (R).