SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Senior catcher Grace Jenkins launched home runs in each of the first and fourth innings to lead second-seeded St. Francis to an 8-1 win over 15th-seeded Cordova in the first round of the Sac-Joaquin Section Division II softball championship at Schuster Field Tuesday afternoon.
The Troubadours improve to 24-3 for the year. The Lancers end their season with a 17-9 record.
Jenkins slammed a frozen-rope to dead center to lead off the first inning, giving St. Francis the early lead. Her second sliced its way over the left-center fence after Olivia McFarland had reached on an RBI single one batter earlier. Jenkins' second homer stretched the lead to 6-0. For the day, the UConn-bound catcher hit 3-for-3 with three runs and the three RBIs.
Meanwhile, senior pitcher Hope Jenkins – joining her twin sister at UConn next year – was equally masterful in the pitching circle, taking a no-hitter into the seventh inning, and striking out 15 Cordova batters against just one walk.
Oddly, the Lancers put their first runner aboard thanks to a misplayed pop-up in the infield, but H. Jenkins erased the runner when she fielded a line-drive bunt and quickly fired to first baseman Kayla Garber for the double-up. Hope then struck out the next 11 batters into the fifth before allowing the one walk.
St. Francis quickly added to its lead after G. Jenkins' bomb in the first. A Lancer error and passed ball helped push across two more tallies in the second, making it 3-0. McFarland's RBI hit set the board to 4-0 before Jenkins' two-run blast three pitches later.
McFarland and G. Jenkins each had hits, and Cordova struggled to another error and a passed ball in that frame to extend the lead to 8-1. The Lancers finally broke up the shutout on a lead-off double and an RBI single in the top of the seventh, but H. Jenkins followed with her 15th strikeout to close the win.
Grace Jenkins raised her season home run total to 11 with the two shots on Tuesday, with seven coming in the last seven games.
St. Francis will now face the winner of Tuesday's River Valley-Bear Creek. With authorization from the CIF-SJS commissioner's office, this second-round matchup will be postponed to Friday, May 20 to prevent a conflict with the SFHS graduation ceremony on Thursday. Tickets are available exclusively via the GoFan app and platform. The section ticket portal is here: https://gofan.co/app/school/CIFSJS.
UPDATE: River Valley defeated Bear River in a walk-off matchup on Tuesday in Yuba City... The Falcons, runners up of the Capital Valley Conference, enter Friday's contest with a 17-9-1 record.
