Antonian overcame history and a long weather delay to win the TAPPS Division I state softball championship with an 11-8 victory against Plano John Paul II on Tuesday night at Allan Saxe Field at UT-Arlington.<\/p>\n
The Apaches (26-9) hit three home runs and a triple to avenge a 12-2 loss in five innings against John Paul in last year\u2019s final. Antonian finished the job following a weather delay that lasted more than five hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just felt like all the hard work, all the grit, the grind of every single second of practice we put in, it paid off,\u201d senior pitcher Analicia Guerrero said. \u201cAnd it paid off so well, especially with the group of girls we have. It was such a relief to know that I did my best and we all did our best and we put it all out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Antonian\u2019s first state championship since 2022, and third in TAPPS overall. They also won it in 2012. The Apache lost a heartbreaker to John Paul II in the 2023 final, 11-10. Antonian lost against Houston St. Agnes in the 2024 state semifinals.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a minute since we won the state championship,\u201d Antonian coach Johnny Villanueva said. \u201cWe finally got the monkey off our back, that\u2019s for sure. JP2 shows up every year, has a good team every year and the biggest thing is our girls, I don\u2019t think they were going to be denied this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Antonian held an 11-4 lead heading into the bottom of the sixth before a storm poured through the area, causing the lengthy weather delay. The Apaches built their lead on the strength of home runs from Guerrero, freshman pinch-hitter Emmie Villanueva and senior left fielder Isabella Garza, who went 4 for 4 with four RBIs.<\/p>\n
When play resumed, John Paul II (26-10-1) scored four in the sixth to pull to within 11-8. Guerrero, who entered in relief of freshman starter Sofia Gonzalez in the fourth inning, shut down the Cardinals in the seventh to secure the championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew from the get-go of just having the delay they were going to come back fighting out strong and being aggressive no matter what,\u201d Guerrero said. \u201cWe still had the lead, and we knew in the last inning, we were going to get them three up, three down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gonzalez struck out two and allowed four hits and two runs (none earned) in three innings. Guerrero had five strikeouts and allowed four earned runs and five hits in four innings. Guerrero pitched a complete game with five strikeouts in the 3-2 victory over St. Agnes in Monday\u2019s semifinal.<\/p>\n
Guerrero, Garza, senior shortstop Trinity Silva and senior center fielder Rylee De La Garza were selected to the all-tournament team.<\/p>\n
Villanueva said his players were ready for unexpected moments like the weather delay because of the challenging schedule they played. One of their notable victories was against Pearland (4-3 in February), which is playing Buda Johnson in the UIL Class 6A Division I state semifinals this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur schedule was built pretty tough this year,\u201d Villanueva said. \u201cWe put them in situations like this (to prepare them) for the last two innings of the championship game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Antonian overcame history and a long weather delay to win the TAPPS Division I state softball championship with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[160,162,161],"class_list":["post-301703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-plano","tag-plano","tag-plano-headlines","tag-plano-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301703","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=301703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}