4A softball: Holy Family cruises to third state title in last four years

AURORA—“Dominant” hardly begins to describe the kind of run Holy Family softball has made through Class 4A over the last four years. Ninety-five wins. 10 losses. Three state titles.

On Saturday at Aurora Sports Park, the top-seeded Tigers earned state championship No. 3 as they cruised to a 10-4 victory over No. 7 D’Evelyn. 
The Tigers shifted the momentum permanently in their favor thanks to a four-run second inning that saw a two-run home run from senior Ava Kuszak–her second of the game–and RBI singles from senior Abby Edwards and junior Katelyn Morris.

“Going up in the at-bats, I just wanted to get hard, line-drive balls,” Kuszak said. “I just wanted to get on base because I wanted the person next to me to get on base. Hits are really contagious. The softball gods watch over everyone. That’s what I believe.”

The Tigers took the 5-2 lead after just two frames and increased that advantage incrementally throughout the rest of the game. Try as they might, the Jaguars just couldn’t match Holy Family’s offensive production. The Tigers sent three balls over the wall as Kaylee McDonald added another bomb in the bottom of the fifth.

And they did it with a host of talent young and old, as the Tigers will be saying goodbye to seniors Kuszak, Edwards, Annika Manzanares and Kaley Anderson. Kuszak and Edwards have been starting from the beginning of their high school careers, and now they get to cap it off with their third championship.

At the other end of the age spectrum lies players like freshman ace Izzy Arroyo and sophomore centerfielder Essynce Contreraz, who steadied the Tiger defense in both the semifinal and title games on Saturday. Arroyo ended her freshman season with an incredible 17-0 record, 1.81 ERA and 136 strikeouts.

The real heroics of the day, however, came from Contreraz who started out the Tigers’ semifinal game against No. 3 Riverdale Ridge with an impressive diving catch on the very first play. She followed it up with a similar play three innings later to put an end to a three-run Raven scoring tangent.

She snuck in one more momentum-preserving catch against D’Evelyn later in the day.

Those two, along with every other returning player for Holy Family, will surely be forces to reckon with over the next few years.

“The girls that we’ve been working with, they buy into the process,” head coach Moriah Nguyen said. “They work hard and come out and fight. For the kids coming back, this is a great experience for them. They know how to fight and scratch and do whatever they can to win a game.”