Schools
Softball: La Cañada Earns Top Seed in CIF Playoffs
The Rio Hondo League champs won Southern Section Division 5 championship last year.
The softball team has the top seed in the CIF Southern Section Division 5 playoffs, but coach KC Mathews doesn’t like to talk too much about it.
La Canada wrapped up the Rio Hondo League championship last week with a 7-0 win over Temple City. The Spartans won five games in a row to cap off the season outscoring opponents, 33-1, over that stretch.
The Spartans (21-4-1) will have to wait for the winner of the wild-card game between Lompoc and Gladstone to know who their first-round opponent is. Once playoffs start, Mathews said his girls are focused on the end of the playoffs, not where they are ranked at the start of the playoffs.
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“It’s not something that we focus on,” Mathews said. “It’s nice. The rankings the first week in June, those are the ones that matter.”
Mathews won his fourth Rio Hondo League championship in a row as coach of the La Canada softball team.
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“It feels great to be league champs again,” La Canada catcher Catherine Horner said. “We’ve been working really hard this season with the loss of our seniors last year. We really wanted to prove ourselves this year and I feel like we did. We are league champs again.”
Senior Lauren Cox (19-3), who’s headed to the University of San Diego in the fall, has a 0.56 ERA in 23 starts. She has 254 strikeouts in 156 1/3 innings. Opponents are hitting .099 off her and she has shut out 15 of the teams she has faced.
Horner leads the team in hitting with a .450 batting average, 12 doubles and 28 RBIs in 26 games.
Alyssa Stolmack and Horner each have four home runs to lead the team. Stolmack is hitting .305 and is one of six Spartans hitting over .300.
Beaumont (22-4), the Mountain Pass League champion, is the No. 2 seed in the Division 5 playoffs. La Canada beat Beaumont, 1-0, in the Division 5 championship game last year.
San Marino (16-8-1), the runner-up in the Rio Hondo League, is the No. 3 seed in the playoffs. La Canada was 2-1 against San Marino in Rio Hondo League play, the lone loss, 3-2, on March 23.
Montebello (18-4), the co-champion of the Almont League, is the No. 4 seed in the Division 5 playoffs.
The CIF Southern Section Division 5 playoffs begin on Tuesday. La Canada’s first game is on Thursday.