Alvarez homers twice as Lady Rattlers wear down Austin Westlake, 13-8

Junior infielder Angelina Alvarez never hit two home runs in a game until her team won a tough 14-13 battle against Austin Westlake in 2021, in which Alvarez sent two shots over the wall. 

Fast forward to Tuesday night against the same opponent, the junior did it again. Alvarez connected on two important home runs to lift her team to a 13-8 win over the Lady Chaparrals on Tuesday night at Rattler Diamond.

Last year’s game was in the back of Alvarez’s mind when she took the field on Tuesday night and Westlake made it easy to duplicate her performance with some easy pitches to make something out of.

“I don’t know, they just pitched down the middle to me both times,” Alvarez said. “It was the same thing both pitches, so I just hit the ball. I remember last year’s performance as well and it played a role in my confidence tonight.”

Alvarez took no time to remind Westlake of what happened last year with a shot to the sky and over the wall that brought in the first two runs of the game in the bottom of the first. However, Westlake made up for it with three consecutive hits of its own, which erased the two-run lead the host had built.

An error by San Marcos (10-14, 4-5 District 26-6A) allowed Westlake (7-11-1, 0-8)  to take a 3-2 lead. It wouldn’t last long as Alvarez hit her second home run in as many at-bats to tie the score at 3-3 in the fourth. Westlake learned its lesson and intentionally walked the junior on her next at-bat in the next inning.

“Honestly I don’t know, I was upset they walked me because I wanted to get another hit,” Alvarez said of the intentional walk.

It didn’t do much, as the Lady Chaparrals had to pitch to sophomore catcher Jessica DeLeon, who had a two-home run performance just last week. The sophomore got a clean hit in a big spot which brought in two more runs for the hosts. With two outs, senior infielder Bitsy Silva added an RBI to her stat sheet with base a hit as well. Head coach Cathy Stoughton believed the walk was the ultimate sign of respect for Alvarez but for DeLeon, it meant something different. 

“Before Jess went up there, I got in her face and said, ‘That’s a lack of respect for you, I want you to go up there and earn that respect,’ just to kind of get in her head,” Stoughton said. “If I were Westlake, I would have walked Angelina, too. That was a very strategic move, I would have done the same thing. But I think it was huge for Jess to step in and get that base hit.”

San Marcos went through 10 batters in combination with throwing errors by Westlake at the bottom of the fifth, resulting in a six-run inning and a 9-3 lead.

The visitors didn’t flinch and forced San Marcos to switch to senior pitcher Mercedes Layton as Westlake loaded the bases. A hit by Skyler Coulson down the first baseline brought in two more runs to make it 9-7.

The hosts didn’t flinch either as Silva hit an RBI double for San Marcos’ fourth run of the sixth, extending the hosts’ lead to six runs. Westlake did score one run in the last frame but not after junior outfielder Eliza Lozano made the exclamation point catch, diving with her outstretched glove which saved a few runs from scoring and helped San Marcos cap off a 13-8 win at home.

Alvarez played almost perfectly with a 3-3 performance at the plate, including two home runs and three RBIs. Silva continued to be a hot bat for the purple and white going 2-4 with four RBIs. 

The win marked the end of a three-game losing skid for the Lady Rattlers. San Marcos runs into school rival and one of 26-6A’s top dogs, Buda Hays (6-2, 4-0), at home on Friday with the first pitch set for 7 p.m. 

“It was close one last time, we dropped 4-1 and we felt like we had some opportunities,” Stoughton said. “We’re looking for it. They are one of the district front-runners and for us playing with no pressure, it would be nice to pin a loss on them.”