Golden Valley softball clinches share CCC championship after upsetting Merced
Golden Valley High softball coach Ross Cruickshanks has high praise for his freshman pitcher when he says Bree Barner reminds him a lot of Marissa Bertuccio.
Cruickshanks sees a lot of the work ethic and attention to detail in Barner that he saw in the former Cougars ace who is now pitching at Sac State.
“If she’s throwing a bullpen and if she’s not happy, she’ll stay until she feels good,” Cruickshanks said. “That’s great for us. She’s a freshman and we’ve thrown her in the big games. She’s handled the adversity well.”
Barner came through with another gem for Golden Valley on Wednesday afternoon, out-dueling Merced’s hard-throwing ace Trisha McCleskey on her way to a a three-hit shutout in a 6-0 win that moves the Cougars (6-1 Central California Conference) into the driver’s seat for the CCC championship.
The loss was the second CCC loss for Merced (5-2 CCC).
The win avenged an earlier 10-0 loss to the Bears.
“I just had to trust my team, trust my defense,” Barner said. “This was a really intense game. I love these type of games when it’s 0-0 late in the game.”
Both Barner and McCleskey dominated early as the game was scoreless headed into the fourth inning.
The Cougars broke the tie when Naomi Moore scored on a sacrifice fly to right field.
Golden Valley tacked three more runs in the sixth inning with the help of a two-run single by KD Felix.
Barner struck out nine against a powerful Merced lineup that had hit 19 home runs in 11 games going into Wednesday. She didn’t walk a batter.
“I just told her she had to trust her pitches,” Cruickshanks said. “Merced has some good hitters and good hitters are going to hit mistakes. There were certain hitters where we needed to keep the ball down and we had talked about not letting certain hitters beat us.”
Golden Valley now has an opportunity to wrap up the CCC championship on Friday at home against Atwater in the regular season finale. A loss could set up a three-way tie with Merced and Atwater.
This story was originally published May 7, 2021 at 10:16 AM.
