Silver Valley senior leads softball team into playoffs

YERMO • Alannah Castro played catcher and recruiter for the Silver Valley softball team this season.

Castro, a senior, has been a member of the Trojans’ varsity softball team for three years and has made the playoffs each time. Castro took a leadership role on the team this season as a captain and helped convince some players to join the team. Among the new players Castro brought in were the team’s only other seniors: Amber Spence, Alejandra Rodriguez and Natalie Elias. The seniors hadn’t played softball in years let alone in high school.
“Her,” Spence, Rodriguez and Elias said as they pointed at Castro when asked why they were playing this season.
“She just kept asking me,” Rodriguez added.

“I didn’t want to do it alone,” Castro said.

Castro’s work on and off the field paid off for the Trojans who are now preparing to play in their fifth-straight CIF-Southern Section playoffs. Silver Valley will face Grace Brethren in the first round of the playoffs at 3:15 p.m. today in Simi Valley. Although the Trojans have been in the playoffs often, they have yet to earn a playoff victory. The Silver Valley baseball team beat La Sierra Academy 7-6 in a wild card game on Tuesday for the school’s first baseball playoff win.

Castro said the baseball team’s win put extra pressure on the softball team.

“We feel like we kind of have to win now,” Castro said. “Otherwise we’ll hear about it forever. It’s my final year and I don’t want it to end either.”

Statistically the teams appear to be evenly matched. Silver Valley and Grace Brethren both average seven runs a game and the Trojans allow a single run a game, four, more than the Lancers. Both teams also have a win percentage hovering around .700. The Trojans played five more games this season than the Lancers.

Silver Valley will face their toughest challenge when they come to the plate today. They will be facing Grace Brethren’s Kassy Dunn who has an ERA of .750 on the season. Dunn has only given up 51 hits and 33 earned runs in 75 innings this year. The Trojans’ Deanna Armstrong will try to out pitch Dunn today. Armstong has an ERA of 3.10 this season. She allowed 103 hits and 39 earned runs in 88 innings this year.

Armstrong’s biggest hurdle will be pitching to Dunn and Danielle Fletcher. Dunn is hitting .612 with six home runs while Fletcher has hit .750 with seven home runs. However, the rest of the Lancers’ line-up doesn’t have a single batter that is hitting above .300.

Silver Valley coach Kevin Mintun thinks Armstrong will be able to pitch effectively during the game.
“We’ll have to work around their two big hitters,” Mintun said. “We can try and give them a lot of stuff that’s not really hitable and make them work for it. Deanna will do well. She’s been strong all season.”

Silver Valley is in a different position offensively than Grace Brethren. The Trojans have seven players hitting above .300 and have the ability to hit throughout their line-up, but lacks a hitter with the overwhelming power of Dunn or Fletcher. Isla Sullivan is leading the team with a .405 batting average and Rodriguez is hitting .400.