Wheatland ousted

Jim Vossler stood at home plate shaking his head as his players misplayed ball after ball during pregame fielding drills.

"If you don't want to be out here, lets not be out here," the coach said in disbelief to his players on the Wheatland High softball team.

Unfortunately for the Pirates, it foreshadowed what was to come as a quintet of fielding errors in the sixth and seventh innings allowed No. 3 Mt. Shasta to score seven unanswered runs and cruise to a 9-4 victory over the No. 2 Pirates in the Northern Section Division IV semifinals.

"I don't know if we were afraid, but it was going all week," Vossler said of the fielding problems. "We had to make some tough plays, and we had the people to make those plays but we didn't in the sixth and seventh.

"We were about 50 percent in practice and then it carried over into the game."

The loss capped an impressive run for the Pirates (16-12), who have been shoe-ins to the section title game for the last half-decade. Thursday's loss denied Vossler an unprecedented sixth consecutive berth to the finals and was Wheatland's eighth straight appearance in the semifinals.

And while the coach was obviously displeased that the Pirates' season was over, he acknowledged that his team fought the odds to reach the postseason and make it past the first round after a number of senior leaders were kicked off the team for vandalizing the Sutter High softball field earlier in the year.

Instead of shuttering, the Pirates relied on remaining upperclassmen like Becca McIntosh, a freshman phenom in pitcher in KC Silva and a number of contingency plan call-ups from the junior varsity team. The group banded together, compiled a third-place finish in the Butte View League and defeated No. 7 Corning 2-0 in the first round on Monday.

"We could have folded at the end of the regular season," Vossler said.

Unfortunately for the Pirates, their feel-good run started to evaporate just six outs away from victory.

With a 4-2 lead heading into the sixth inning, the Pirates were forced to watch five Bears cross the plate. Mt. Shasta belted a pair of hits, took advantage of a hit batter, a throwing error with a runner on third and a bases-loaded fielding error to wrestle the lead away from the Pirates.

Then in the seventh, the Bears added another two runs on two hits. But that doesn't tell the whole story as a missed catch in the outfield and a pair of errant throws in the infield allowed the runners to reach home and pad the Bears' lead.

Silva, who assumed the role of the Pirates No. 1 starter after the mid-year shakeup, scattered eight hits and struck out four. Bears starter Kayla Spini, also a ninth grader, grunted her way to seven strikeouts and rebounded from a shaky start after the Bears had some defensive miscues of their own.

"(Silva) did all right, she left it over the plate a bit but she adjusted," Vossler said. "But we just gave them extra bases."

The Pirates opened up a quick 2-0 lead after back-to-back fielding errors allowed Ashley Gillmore and Jordan Thompson to get on base. Gillmore scored on the second error, and after stealing second, Thompson was brought in on a single from McIntosh, who led the Pirates at the dish, going 3-for-3 with a walk. Megan Dodd, the Pirates' No. 9 hitter, went 2-for-2 with an RBI.

"I was hoping we could do well," said the soft-spoken McIntosh, who just became the first player to commit to the William Jessup University softball team.

Just minutes after the game ended, Vossler assembled his players just past the infield on the first baseline and addressed his young team about how they were going to work toward reaching the summit again next year.

"A lot of them play so much over the summer," he said. "Hopefully they work hard to get back to the championship game.

"Everything were doing is gearing toward this. If that's not their focus, then don't come out."