On Thursday May 5th, 2022 the South El Monte Lady Eagles played a home CIF-SS playoff game against Mayfair High School. The game began at 3:15 p.m with both teams extremely excited to play as it was the first round of the CIF-SS playoffs. South El Monte came into this game with a 19-5 record looking to win and advance to the 2nd round of playoffs. The Mayfair Monsoons came into the game with a 14-10 record which put them in 3rd place in the Suburban League.

The game started off fast as Freshman Jazmine Leyva wasn’t able to find the zone walking the first 2 batters of the inning. Mayfair would go on to load the bases with 1 out. Thankfully, South El Monte was able to let out a sigh of relief as they only allowed 1 run to come across that inning. South El Monte didn’t respond to those runs in the bottom of the 1st inning but they did in the bottom of the 2nd inning. 

In the bottom of the 2nd inning, the Lady Eagles successfully loaded the bases and got 2 runs across the board. In that same inning however, there was a controversial call that prevented South El Monte from scoring 3 more insurance runs that would’ve put the score at 5-1 in favor of South. Senior Rachel Leon came up to bat and ripped a line drive into Center Field. The Center Fielder made an acrobatic catch to save the runs, but the umpires thought she dropped it so called the play live. After an umpire meeting, they overturned the call which took away a base clearing 3-RBI double from Rachel Leon.

Mayfair was able to get past that controversial 2nd inning call, as they came up to bat in the 3rd and they immediately caught fire. Almost every batter that came up was guaranteed to get a base hit. Thankfully, the South El Monte defense was top of the line and prevented Mayfair from getting a huge inning. Mayfait thankfully only scored 1 run which sadly tied the game at 2-2. 

In the top of the 4th inning, the Mayfair batter was walked and she then stole 2nd bases to get into scoring position right away. The batter was #17 Grace Cummins. Grace was able to get a hold of a ball as she ripped it down the line for an RBI Double. The score was now 3-2 in favor of Mayfair. 

South El Monte’s bats went quiet as they didn’t score a single run after the 2nd inning until the 6th inning. Mayfair on the other hand, stayed aggressive all throughout the game as they scored a run in every single inning except for the 2nd and 3rd. After the 5th inning, the score was 3-2 in favor of Mayfair, but that was quickly about to change. In the 6th inning, Mayfair got hot once again and scored 3 runs. The score was now 6-2 in favor of Mayfair and if South El Monte didn’t wake up soon then their season was quickly going to come to an end. 

Thankfully, something sparked for the South El Monte offense as they started to draw together walks, hits, and anything else to get on base. The Lady Eagles showed obvious effort to not let their season end as they would go on to score 4 runs in the bottom of the 6th inning. This put the score at 6-6 meaning if neither team scored in the 7th inning, they would go into extras. Sadly, Mayfair proved to want it more as they immediately came out and scored the 1 run that they needed to take the lead putting the score at 7-6. South El Monte would not take advantage of the chance they had to walk it off in the bottom of the 7th inning, as the game ended with Mayfair winning with a score of 7-6 moving onto the 2nd round of the CIF-SS playoffs. 

One player that stood out for South El Monte however was Sophomore, Alyssa Hernandez. Alyssa went 1-1 with a base hit and a base on balls. She also brought in 2 runs giving her 2 RBIs for the day.