Softball season wrap up

After achieving the highest batting average of a single season, the Samo softball team has secured a spot in this season’s California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) after a record of 10-0 in Ocean League.Coach Debbie Skaggs has confidence that the team’s offensive strengths will lead the team to finals and bring the team to victory.Captain Annie Quine (’15), starting pitcher Whitney Jones (’15), second baseman Ashley Rakuljic (’16) and Sarah Garcia (’14) have allowed the team to improve offensive strategies and skills.With a variety of pitches to keep her opponents off the base, Jones prevents the opposing team from scoring.  Garcia is a powerful batter for the team.  Still, a good coach looks for improvement. Despite the Vikings’ great Ocean League season, a lack in defense was still apparent, Skaggs said.“Whitney pitched well in league, but the defense made errors, which allowed for some runs,” Skaggs said. “That will have to be improved upon before CIF playoffs in order to have a chance of getting back to the finals.”The team’s biggest weakness is fielding errors in defense. According to Jones, this is the reason the team has struggled this season.“We lost both of the games,” Jones said. “We did well scoring runs in both games, but due to fielding errors we fell behind.”Many careless ground balls were not correctly fielded. In a back-to-back non-league game against North Torrance, Samo made nine consecutive errors. Since the game, they have begun improving defensive skill.“This season, we had a little bit of a rocky start,” Jones said. “We hadn’t really clicked together as a team, but as the season progressed and we played our rivals Hawthorne and Culver City, our team and game was massively improved.”The team has landed a spot in playoffs many years in a row as well as a spot in the CIF finals last year. The team has not won the CIF championships since 2010.“We are in the semi-finals and play tomorrow against Dos Pueblos. We won our first game 3-0, second game 1-0 and we had a huge comeback in the quarter finals on Saturday. The score was 3-2,” Jones said.During the 7th inning in the quarter finals on Saturday against Heritage, the team gained a motivation to redeem itself from last year. The title that slipped through their fingers last year in the CIF finals drives the team to push harder this year.“Our biggest obstacle to overcome this year is ourselves,” Jones said. “But as long as we work together and communicate as a team, we can win any game.”dperdomo@thesamohi.com