Rodoni, Pacheco dominate El Capitan in softball

Cassie Gasper had thrown almost every inning for the El Capitan High School softball team this season. So when Pacheco coach Charlie Pikas saw the Gauchos sophomore wasn’t warming up before the game, he was surprised.

Without Gasper, the Gauchos fell apart as Pacheco took advantage of 13 walks and six errors on its way to a 14-1 win in a Western Athletic Conference game that was stopped after five innings because of the 10-run mercy rule.

“It’s the first time all year where we didn’t play well from start to finish,” El Capitan coach Bobby Johnson said. “It’s disappointing. We’ve had a really good season up until this point, but I think almost every team has one of these games.”

Johnson isn’t sure when Gasper, who is 14-7 and had pitched 134 2/3 innings of the 1381/3 total innings thrown by the Gauchos’ pitching staff this season, will be available to throw again.

“She has a tender elbow so we’re shutting her down for a while,” Johnson said. “I don’t think she’ll throw on Thursday and maybe not the rest of the year. We’ll just wait and see.”

Tuesday’s game wasn’t anything like the 1-0 win by Pacheco in their first matchup.

Pikas had his ace, Gia Rodoni, and the Baylor-bound senior dominated, striking out 11 and giving up just two hits and one unearned run.

The run came in the first inning as McKenzie Schumacher led off with a triple and scored on a passed ball. After giving up the hit, Rodoni struck out the next six hitters.

“When I gave up the hit, I was frustrated,” Rodoni said. “I missed my spot. It was all my fault. I wanted to come back and get the next three outs without giving up the run but wasn’t able to do that.”

The Panthers (10-13, 7-1 WAC) took advantage of five walks and two errors in the second inning as they sent 11 hitters to the plate and scored five runs to take a 6-1 lead.

Jennifer Eagleton delivered the big hit in the inning with a two-run single, and Yadira Castillo added an RBI double.

Pacheco tacked on five more runs in the third as Rodoni drove in two runs with a single and Eagleton, Sammy Jacquez and Shyanne Vargas all drove in runs.

“We usually try to get a run or two early and then hopefully we can relax at the plate,” Pikas said. “That happened today. We did a good job of laying off pitches out of the zone early on.”

This story was originally published April 14, 2015 at 11:08 PM with the headline "Rodoni, Pacheco dominate El Capitan in softball."