Prep softball playoffs: St. Patrick-St. Vincent walks to quarterfinals

The St. Patrick-St. Vincent High School softball team didn't need many hits to overcome an eight-run deficit in Wednesday's North Coast Section Division VI playoff opener.

They just needed patience.

The Bruins drew 10 walks and were hit three times in a 10-run fifth inning as 16 batters came to the plate without notching a single hit.

"Their pitcher was winding down, so I didn't want them to swing until there was a strike," St. Pat's head coach Sarah Richardson-Ledbetter said. "I figured why give them an opportunity if I didn't have to."

St. Pat's didn't look back from there, earning an 18-16 victory over Credo and a trip to the quarterfinals.

"I'm so proud of us today. We definitely showed out," said freshman Alondra Barba. "Even though we were down, we came back fighting."

The first-round win was special for a young Bruins team, which missed the playoffs each of the last two years and won just two games a season ago.

"This was a huge thing for them, just to be able to be in NCS and for us to win an NCS game," Richardson-Ledbetter said. "If this is all we get, then this is what we get. We're just happy to play and actually do well."

That hunger for a playoff win was the catalyst behind St. Pat's battling back from down 12-4 in the fifth inning.

"We persevered through this one," Barba said. "We had good energy the whole time, we didn't let our guard down and we trusted each other."

The Bruins fell behind early after the Gryphons scored four runs in the third, four in the fourth and three in the fifth. Sophomore Giada Saechao headlined the offensive explosion, launching a two-run home run to center field in the fourth.

But while Saechao starred at the plate, she struggled to find the strike zone. Saechao and Aliana Martinez combined to issue 10 walks in the fifth as the Gryphons finished with 17 walks and 11 hit batters.

"It takes a lot of discipline to do that because we have a lot of people that are used to faster pitching," Richardson-Ledbetter said. "It gave us the opportunity to put in a couple of our younger players and give them an opportunity to hit, so that was good for our team."

Barba got the Bruins' offense going early with an RBI groundout in the first and a run-scoring in the third. Barba and Alliana Jones finished with three RBI apiece, while Jaquelyn Benito drove in four runs.

Benito delivered the Bruins' biggest hit of the game in the sixth, ripping a three-run triple to right field to give St. Pat's a 17-13 lead. Credo cut the deficit to 18-16 in the seventh, but relief pitcher Taylor Etchieson induced a game-ending flyout to seal the win.

"We have always instilled in them, ‘we're never out until it's done,'" Richardson-Ledbetter said. "We've had games like that where we were down, but came back and won. We knew we could, so we figured might as well."

Errors prolonged the seventh inning and plagued St. Pat's early, but Richardson-Ledbetter said she's confident the seventh-seeded Bruins can clean things up before Friday's matchup against second-seeded Healdsburg.

"Some of those errors that we had, we really haven't had them during the regular season," Richardson-Ledbetter said. "It'll be fixed."

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This story was originally published May 21, 2026 at 2:19 PM.