McCurdy School’s softball team, led by star pitcher Rikki Ortiz, raised a lot of eyebrows by advancing to the championship game of the St. Michaels Invitational March 28 to face the host Horsemen.
The Bobcats were the only small Class A-AA school in a tournament that featured three Class AAAA teams and four Class AAA teams, and they’d come from behind to beat West Las Vegas 4-3 in the opening round March 26. After a snowstorm forced the cancellation of the second-round games the following day, McCurdy knocked off Hope Christian 4-2 March 28 and advanced to the championship game against the Horsemen that same afternoon.
The Bobcats couldn’t come up with another come-from-behind rally against the hot-hitting St. Michaels and fell 12-2. The Horsemen, who had beaten Taos 15-1 in the opening round of the tournament and knocked off Española 11-2 in the semifinals, had 13 hits off Ortiz.
McCurdy took a 1-0 lead in the top of the first inning on Megan VanderVossen’s single, which scored Mariah Maestas from third base. St. Michaels answered with three runs in the bottom of the first inning and two more in the second.
Ortiz led off the top of the fourth with a double and scored on a ground-out by Miranda Vigil to make the score 5-2, but the Horsemen scored five more runs in the bottom of the fourth and two in the fifth. The game ended under the 10-run mercy rule.
McCurdy had begun the tournament with a dramatic 4-3 victory over West Las Vegas March 26 in the opening round. The Bobcats trailed 0-3 going into their final at-bat. McCurdy rallied for four runs with Maestas delivering a two-run single and West Las Vegas committing a two-run error on a ground ball by VanderVossen.
“The girls knew they could do it,” McCurdy assistant coach Anthony VanderVossen said. “They never put their heads down and never gave up.”
Against Hope Christian March 28, the Bobcats again rallied after falling behind 2-0. McCurdy scored two runs in the fourth inning and added two more in the fifth to take the victory. Ortiz was the winning pitcher in both games.
The Bobcats are now 2-2 on the season.
Postseason Heartbreak
McCurdy has suffered heartbreak at the Class A-AA state softball tournament the last two seasons. They lost 4-2 to Loving in the 2007 championship game, and got knocked out of the 2008 semifinals by the same team after two controversial calls.
Coach Danny Vigil, who had been McCurdy’s only softball coach since the program was started in 1996, resigned after last season. But new coach Ray Sandoval, with assistants VanderVossen and Angel Martinez, inherited nearly all of Vigil’s players.
McCurdy returns all but one of their starters from last season. There are nine seniors on the roster to provide experience and leadership.
“It’s like getting to drive a Ferrari,” VanderVossen said.
Sandoval said the win over West Las Vegas was “huge” and the Bobcats are handling the coaching change well.
“They were facing a whole lot of changes and they’re adjusting really well,” he said. “We don’t have to baby-sit them.”
The Bobcats are looking for another state championship trophy to go with the one they won in 2002 under Vigil.
“After last year’s heartbreaker, they want it a lot more this year,” VanderVossen said.