There’s a lot of strangeness surrounding this week’s Extra Elite 80 national high school softball rankings, but for different reasons in Texas, Florida and California.
In Texas, No. 1 Lake Creek improved to 40-0 with a pair of wins last weekend over previous No. 28 Barbers Hill in the Class 5A regional semifinals and will play new No. 29 Georgetown beginning Thursday in the regional finals.
"We knew that this was a special group."
The word "special" is an understatement when talking about the @LakeCreek_SB program.
The Lions are the best team in the country, have won a record 81 straight games…but a 2nd straight state title is what they're hoping for. @KHOU pic.twitter.com/yEEHjOFb47
— Daniel Gotera (@DTGotera) May 24, 2023
One of the Texas Class 5A regional finals, however, already got started on Wednesday night of this week and in it there was an upset as previous No. 2 and unbeaten Guyer of Denton was edged 5-4 by Keller. The strange aspect for this week’s rankings is that Guyer isn’t done. It’s a best-of-three format so the Wildcats can still come back and win the series and would then head to the state tournament potentially still with a 37-1 overall record.
In Florida, the pecking order of top teams had to be changed with an upset in the Class 3A state playoffs. Previous No. 3 Coral Springs Charter saw its unbeaten season end with a 1-0 loss to Somerset Academy Silver Palms. It will therefore be the Stallions (moved up to No. 29 this week) playing in the Class 3A state final on Saturday against Calvary Christian of Clearwater.
In the Florida Class 6A state playoffs, front-running Pace won in its quarterfinal game last weekend, 11-1, over Oviedo and will be playing its semifinal state contest on Friday vs. Land O’Lakes. Both of the teams in the other semifinal, Bartow and Doral Academy, are also in this week’s Elite 80 and Doral Academy is a team that has a win over Somerset Academy Silver Palms.
The season in California took a twist not just because of Garden Grove Pacifica’s surprising run to the prestigious CIF Southern Section D1 championship. The Mariners, who had eight losses in the regular season playing a tough schedule, completed their quest last Friday with a 15-9 win over top seed Norco in the title game. They scored seven runs in the fifth inning to turn back the Cougars. Annika Sogsti and Delaina Ma’ae both had three hits and combined for seven RBI. Kayli Counts had the go-ahead single, which also was the third straight playoff game for her that she did that.
Highlights of Pacifica softball securing their 8th CIF title. Watch full video here https://t.co/iPP2O3bdxh A great night for the Mariners! #ggusdsoftball #phsmariners @PacHS_Softball pic.twitter.com/066ZljBSfP
— GGUSD Athletics (@ggusdathletics) May 20, 2023
After the win over Norco, Pacifica head coach Tony Arduino told reporters that the team already had decided it would opt out of next week’s CIF Southern California regional playoffs.
Last year, CIFSS D1 winner Roosevelt of Eastvale played on in the regionals and lost in its final game to Oaks Christian of Westlake Village. That development plus the fact that teams would have to wait a week to find out where it would be seeded in those CIF regional playoffs has seemed to create a cascading scenario of schools opting out of those playoffs. In fact, most of the top CIFSS teams from its D1 and D2 brackets aren’t going to play on. This means that the southern regionals in the CIF will be essentially a series of exhibition games.
It remains to be seen if the CIF Northern California regional championships will be impacted similarly but because the various sections are smaller and the top teams do not tend to play each other very often it’s unlikely the opt outs will be the same.
California top-ranked St. Francis of Mountain View won on Wednesday in its CIF Central Coast Section D1 semifinal game, 3-0, over Willow Glen of San Jose and will play Hollister in the title game on Saturday. Hollister knocked off No. 2 seed and nationally ranked Archbishop Mitty in extra innings, 4-3, in the other semifinal. Other teams from Northern California that are in this week’s rankings include Vacaville and Central of Fresno. Previous No. 11 Clovis North of Fresno was upset in the first round of the CIF Central Section playoffs last week by Stockdale of Bakersfield.
—Â Mark Tennis
*****
(After games of Wednesday, May 24)
(Previous rank in parentheses)
*Indicates season complete.
**Indicates forfeit wins, losses not included.
TOP 10
- (1) Lake Creek (Montgomery, Texas) 40-0
- (4) Pace (Pace, Fla.) 27-1
- (8) Canyon (New Braunfels, Texas) 30-0
- (5) St. Francis (Mountain View, Calif.) 26-2
- (6) Ballard (Louisville, Ky.) 32-1
- (2) Guyer (Denton, Texas) 35-1
- (10) Salpointe Catholic (Tucson, Ariz.) 35-1*
- (14) Marist (Chicago, Ill.) 31-2
- (7) Watkins Memorial (Pataskala, Ohio) 27-1
- (13) Basha (Chandler, Ariz.) 27-4-1*
*** Scroll down to see the rest of the 2023 Extra Elite 80 teams!
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