The Bakersfield College softball team hosted five Southern Californian colleges at the 2014 BC Classic tournament on Feb. 22-23.
BC went 1-3 in the tournament, losing its first game to Mount San Antonio College 11-0 on Feb. 22, before beating Moorpark College 12-9.
BC managed only one hit, put up by outfielder Amanda Bundy. Mt. SAC ending up 4-0 in the tournament, beating Cypress College 4-3 that evening, and beating Southwestern College 20-4 and College of the Canyons 4-1 the next day.
That evening BC beat Moorpark which had just come off an 8-4 loss to Southwestern. Fourteen hits were made by the Renegades that game. Third baseman Brenna Vasquez and catcher Madalyn Arambula led the way with three runs each. First baseman Katie Hoffman and pitcher Brooke Quiddam each had four RBI, and Arambula also had three RBI.
BC held a lead in each inning, 5-3 in the first, 9-4 in the second, and 10-6 in the third. BC didn’t score in the fourth inning, which allowed Moorpark to close the gap to one run but failed to answer two runs in the fifth inning.
BC played Southwestern on Feb. 23 and lost 13-2. Catcher Vanessa Moralez hit a home run, which also got center fielder Bailey Graham a run in the sixth inning. The game was 6-0 until the sixth when BC scored its only two runs and Southwestern scored seven. Southwestern lost to Cypress 16-7 and was 2-2 for the tournament.
BC’s final game was a 19-11 loss against Cypress.
The Renegades took an early 6-1 lead in the first inning, but gave up eights runs in the second leaving the score 9-8. The third inning saw Cypress score four more runs while BC only made two, and the fourth saw Cypress score another five runs leaving BC 11-18.
Moralez and Vasquez each had a homerun; Moralez also had three RBI. BC had 16 hits, one more than Cypress. Cypress beat Canyons 7-2.
Co-head coach Ryane Peterson was pleased with her team’s performance, though she was sick and only watched the game. “Overall, I think we had less big run innings. The games were at least closer. We had more hits, we didn’t let people out hit us by a big margin and the scores stayed closer,” she said. Cypress was the best game in her opinion. “The Cypress game was a close one and Cypress is someone that beats up on pretty much everyone and last year they beat us pretty bad. That game was pretty close, and we’ve actually never scored that many runs against Cypress.”
On Feb. 27 BC hosted Ventura College and lost 5-4. Moralez had another homerun and two RBI. The game remained close throughout, with both teams trading runs. In the sixth inning the score was 2-2, but in the seventh Ventura managed to edge out BC’s two runs with three of its own.
Peterson says that her girls are solidifying their skills with these games and prepping for league play.
“Part of what we need to work on is walking; our pitchers cannot be giving that many walks. We’re learning how to hit better, but our pitching needs to be there too, so our defense is doing well and our hitting was high, and there’s always going to be those high and low points, but we’re learning how to bring it all together a little better. We need to bring everything together, we can’t expect to win games if we’re getting out hit, on the other hand we are hitting well but we can’t win games if we’re giving walks.”
BC currently sits at 3-8 this season with their last pre-league game against Allan Hancock College on March 4 before their first league game against Antelope Valley College on March 6.