Softball: First inning was our undoing, says Glendora’s coach

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‘My biggest fear was that first inning. Even though we have a lot of seniors, we’re still a very young club. Call it shell-shock, but that hasn’t happened to us all year.’

-- Glendora Coach Reese Mitchell, after his Tartans lost to El Modena, 12-4, in the Southern Section-Toyota Division II championship game Friday night at Barber Park in Irvine.

With seven underclassmen in the starting lineup, getting some confidence early on was key for Glendora. The Tartans, however, started the game by allowing five runs in the first inning, three of them coming on back-to-back home runs by El Modena’s third and fourth batters. The other two were the result of an error by sophomore shortstop Natalie Hernandez.

‘We did a lot of things tonight that we haven’t done all year and it made it a difficult situation,’ Mitchell said of the team’s five errors, four hit batters and 11 runners left on base. ‘Even at 7-2 we were battling in the third inning. We have bases loaded and I’m thinking, ‘A big hit here, we score a couple runs and we’re down 7-4, 7-5 and it’s a ball game.’ ‘

Mitchell said the loss doesn’t diminish what the team accomplished this season.

‘I don’t think anybody, whether it’s Orange County or even the San Gabriel Valley, expected us to get here,’ he said. ‘We always thought we had good games and good players. How we grow from this is, ‘OK, we’ve been to the big stage now -- all the bells and whistles and all the hoopla -- we’ve been here. Now, let’s work harder to try to get back here.’

Despite the tough loss, Mitchell was very willing to talk, except when it came it came to the subject of El Modena’s controversial strategy to switch jersey numbers during the playoffs.

‘You know, I’m not going to go there,’ he said. Mitchell agreed that the strategy had nothing to do with the final score, but still ... ‘You play it straight up, you just say, ‘Here’s what we got, here’s our kids, let’s go compete.’’

Would Mitchell ever consider doing something like that?

‘No. No, no, no, no,’ he said.

-- Jaime Cardenas