ARLINGTON \u2014 The dream of back-to-back state championships for the Plano John Paul II softball team ended with an 11-8 loss to San Antonio Antonian Prep in the TAPPS Division I championship game Tuesday at UT-Arlington\u2019s Allan Saxe Field.<\/p>\n
The game\u2019s conclusion was halted by a five-hour, 10-minute weather delay in the bottom of the sixth inning with John Paul trailing 11-4. When the game re-started, it was a more relaxed Cardinal team that outscored\u00a0Antonian 4-0 in the final inning and a half. It wasn’t enough to win the game but was a pleasing sight for John Paul II coach Jayme Baker-Nelson.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir energy, the way they fought, is contagious,\u2019\u2019 said Baker-Nelson. \u201cWe got a little bit of a reset during the delay. We relaxed and played loose. We were tight 100% early in the game.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
John Paul II (26-10-1), bidding for its fourth title in the last six years, graduated five seniors from last year\u2019s state championship roster. All four Cardinals on the all-tournament team were underclassmen: junior catcher Bridget Mulligan, junior shortstop\u00a0Dani Maloney, sophomore third baseman Maddy Campbell and sophomore pitcher Kayla Paige Walters.<\/p>\n
After the delay, Maloney connected on a three-run homer over the center field fence and Mulligan followed with a double and eventually scored the final run on Katy Holman fielder\u2019s choice.<\/p>\n
Much earlier in the day, John Paul II trailed 5-0 going into the bottom of the fourth and rallied for four runs to close the gap to 5-4.<\/p>\n
The Cardinals capitalized on a three Antonian errors and base hits by Campbell, Maloney and pinch hitter Jayden Anderson. Campbell had three hits, including a double to lead the attack and started two double plays.<\/p>\n
But that comeback was negated when\u00a0Antonian scored five to go up 10-4 in the top of the fifth, keyed by a pair of two-run homers by winning pitcher Analica Guerrero and pinch hitter Emmie Villanueva.<\/p>\n
Antonian patiently turned walks into runs in the first three innings. Isabella Garza, who went 4 for 4 from the No. 2 spot in Lady Apaches\u2019 batting order, had RBI hits in the first and third innings to help build the lead.<\/p>\n
Second baseman Alejandra Santoyo contributed a pair of doubles and scored two runs for Antonian.<\/p>\n
Argyle Liberty Christian placed\u00a0MaKenzie Byler and Paige Childers on the all-tournament team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARLINGTON \u2014 The dream of back-to-back state championships for the Plano John Paul II softball team ended with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[732,160,162,161,26793,109275,109276],"class_list":["post-300721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-plano","tag-article","tag-plano","tag-plano-headlines","tag-plano-news","tag-softball","tag-tp-john-paul-ii-school","tag-tp-tapps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}