A good Friday for the Bobcats

The Saddleback softball team finished off the week with an 8-0 win over Santiago Canyon College on Friday at the Saddleback softball diamond.  The Bobcats dominated from start-to-finish.

Saddleback has had an interesting week.  They started the week with a big win over Cypress, one of the perennial powers of community college softball in California.  The Bobcats finished the week by beating first place Santiago Canyon on Friday, thus knocking the Hawks into a three-way tie for first place with Cypress and Santa Ana.

Saddleback scored three runs in the opening inning on Santiago Canyon, sending eight batters to the plate.  The Bobcats had four hits in the inning and took advantage of a big defensive miscue by the Hawks.  Ehva Cifuentes-Zombulovic opened the scoring with a double to score Anne Thibert with the opening run of the game.  Later in the inning, Saddleback scored two unearned runs when Katie Schmidt singled home Emma Estep and Desiree McGruder doubled home Isabel Siqueiros for a 3-0 lead.

Saddleback added another run in the bottom half of the second inning when Cifuentes-Zombulovic drove a ball off of the top of the left field wall for a double to score Thibert for a 4-0 lead.

Katie Schmidt started on the mound for Saddleback and was effective in picking up her 10^th win of the season.  She spread around five hits while striking out four in shutting down the SCC offense.  Schmidt got out of a huge jam in the top half of the fifth inning when the Hawks loaded the bases with two outs in the inning when she got Samantha Villanueva to hit a line drive directly to McGruder in left field for the third out of the inning to preserve the shutout.

Cifuentes-Zombulovic wasn't finished on offense as Saddleback came to the plate in the bottom half of the fifth inning needing four runs to win by virtue of the 8-run rule.  She eventually came to the plate with the bases loaded and two outs in the inning with the Bobcats up 5-0, and delivered a bases-clearing double to right field to end the game.  Cifuentes-Zombulovic finished 3-for-4 with five RBI in the game, with Thibert scoring three of the runs. Cifuentes-Zombulovic (pictured left) now has 35 RBI on the season, which is the most for any player since 2014 with Christina Pantages had 49 and Samantha Molina had 37.   

Saddleback is now 10-19 overall and 6-13 in Orange Empire Conference play with two regular season games remaining on the schedule.  The Bobcats will host Golden West College on Monday at 2:00 PM before traveling to Fullerton College for a 3:00 PM start on Friday.