When juniors Jessica Rodriguez and Juliana Wilson watch their talented but silly freshmen teammates in practice, they feel like they’re looking at a magical mirror of nostalgia.
The Watsonville High softball stars can drift back to a much simpler time of tomfoolery, featuring dorky dance moves and playful punches.
“I’m always telling Julz, ‘oh yeah, remember when we were like that?’” Rodriguez said before adding: “actually, we probably still do all that stuff.”
Some things never change.
A year after winning the Central Coast Section Division I championship, Watsonville will head into the section’s prestigious Open Division as a younger, yet arguably better team.
The No. 3-seeded Wildcatz will play at No. 6 Los Gatos High on Saturday at 10 a.m. in the quarterfinal round, and they’ll be banking on their crop of newcomers to continue their recent stellar play through the high-pressure bracket featuring the section’s best teams.
Including Watsonville (36th), six of the eight teams in the division — No. 1 Carlmont High (14th), No. 8 Archbishop Mitty (84th), No. 5 St. Ignatius (37th), No. 2 St. Francis-Mountain View (44th) and No. 7 Valley Christian (52nd) — are all ranked within the top 100 teams in California, according to MaxPreps.com. And of those half-dozen teams, the Wildcatz might be the most youthful of them all.
Watsonville carries six freshmen on its roster of 15, and three of them have been forced into important roles over the course of the season. Outfielders Anastacia Alba and Maya Guerrero and second baseman Maliyah Sandin were thrust into the starting lineup at the beginning of the season in hopes of replacing now-graduated captains Nicole Wilson and Liyah Lopez, who were integral pieces of last year’s historic section championship squad.
The trio has surpassed expectations.
Alba is second on the team in batting average (.506), hits (39), RBIs (34), runs (31) and home runs (9), and also leads the ‘Catz in triples (4). Guerrero is hitting .424 and is second in doubles (7), third in hits (28) and homers (4) and fourth in RBIs (17). Sandin is only hitting .262, but has been a sure thing on defense, committing only one error all season in the infield.
“They’ve been there all year long,” said Watsonville head coach Scott Wilson. “They’re stepping it up and getting it done.”
Their ability with the glove has helped the team carry on its reputation of playing fundamental defense. But their expertise with the bat has allowed Watsonville’s lineup to evolve into a pitcher’s worst nightmare.
Last season, teams could pitch around catcher and cleanup hitter Juliana Wilson, Scott’s daughter who is batting .667 and leads the team in nearly every offensive statistical category. But with Alba behind her in the No. 4 spot, sophomore outfielder Angelina Heredia at No. 5 and Guerrero slotted in behind them in No. 6, there is virtually no time for a pitcher to catch her breath when facing the heart of the Watsonville lineup.
“When they’re able to do that, it really does become a more complete squad,” Wilson said. “Now you have to choose who you pitch to… Teams have been taking their chances with our other girls, and they’ve made them pay most of the time.”
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the freshmen’s success has been their ability to stay even-keeled through what has been a roller coaster of a season. Watsonville began its campaign with a 10-game winning streak, but stumbled by losing three of its next four Monterey Bay League Gabilan division games to put its league-title quest in jeopardy. The Wildcatz, however, refocused down the stretch to win five straight league games and capture a share of the MBL-G championship.
Over the course of that winning streak, Alba slapped a pair of homers, Guerrero also left the yard and fellow freshman Devyn Bugayong also had a couple of key at-bats. Guerrero said the pressure of not only playing in big games, but making outcome-altering plays is something that her and the rest of the freshmen are used to.
Guerrero, Sandin, Alba, Bugayong and back-up freshman pitcher Daisy Ortiz have all played high-level travel softball for at least half a decade.
“There’s no pressure. You just get used to it over the years,” said Guerrero, who has been playing softball since she was 7. “It’s actually weight off your shoulders, because you actually do something and you’re not just sitting around. You’re just out there playing the game you love and helping your team win.”
Of course, it wasn’t all rainbows, butterflies and moonshot home runs. There was a communication gap between the freshmen and nine returning players at the beginning of the season. The freshmen would dawdle through practice, and try to mash extra-base hits during games. They didn’t quite understand how the tempo of a practice would impact their performance on game day. Rodriguez, Wilson and Watsonville’s three seniors, Savanah Quintana, Amaya Gonzales and Zaira Pena, had to refine their leadership qualities to get the younger girls to buy in and pay a little more attention to the details.
“They didn’t really know what to do,” Rodriguez said. “The upperclassmen, we really had to set an example of how this team works and how we put 100 percent effort in practice and games. It took them a while to get it, but they’re getting it now. They’re really buckling down in practice.”
Once that started to click, everything else followed. The bats started connecting, the wins started piling up and the relationships blossomed. The upperclassmen no longer looked at the freshmen as only teammates. They saw them as little sisters, who they could tease and trust in a team-wide group chat that has been going strong for the past two months.
“As the season has gone on we’ve become more of a family, and our connection is pretty good right now,” Juliana Wilson said.
Good enough, they hope, to open some eyes on Saturday and beyond.
