It doesn’t happen very often that a team sweeps a Pearland squad during the playoffs, but a Lady Oiler team isn’t usually facing the defending 6A state champions.
Pearland and Deer Park were facing one another in the Class 6A Region III finals in a best-of-three series with the winner punching their ticket to the 6A state softball tournament in Austin.
Whenever teams are mentioned as state powers, Deer Park and Pearland are both included in the conversation.
Deer Park advanced to the state softball tournament in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2017, and 2021. In the 2021 season, Coach Amy Vidal-Bush led her team to state and came home with a ring. They had an amazing season record of 38-8! The school now has three state championships under their belt!
The Lady Deer advances to the 2022 state tournament with a current 40-4 mark while Pearland closes out their season at 32-10. That means both teams combined for a 72-14 record in 2022 with the Lady Deer still playing.
Pearland has won two state titles in 1996 and 2010 while also advancing to state in 2009 and 2011.
In Game 1, it looked like Deer Park would take control early after taking a 6-1 lead in the bottom of the second inning with five runs, but the never-say-die Lady Oilers overcame their early game jitters to score four runs in the top of the third to close the gap to 6-5 which stood till the bottom of the sixth when Deer Park added an insurance run to make the final score 7-5.
Both teams struggled in the pitching circle as walks by Pearland led to the five runs in the second inning, but Deer Park also was affected by walks in Pearland’s four-run third inning.
Pearland junior pitcher Abigail Gutierrez suffered the loss after giving up four runs on three hits, two walks, and three strikeouts.
The Lady Oilers offense came up with only five hits led by Hailey Golden (1-for-4, 1 run), Raenna Liscano (1-for-3), Alissa McClellen (1-for-2, 1 run, 1 RBI), Trinity Perry (1-for-3, 1 RBI), and Darian DeLeon (1-for-4, 1 RBI).
In Game 2, the game turned out to be a pitching battle between Deer Park’s Reanna Nieman and Pearland’s Abigail Gutierrez.
Nieman faced only three batters over the minimum, and allowed only three scattered singles, in a 3-0 complete-game shutout of the Oilers at the UH softball field, sending the defending champions back to the state tournament.
Gutierrez allowed nine hits and three runs while striking out four and walking two in taking the loss.
Deer Park took a 1-0 lead in the top of the second when left fielder Lorelei Graham reached on a throwing error by the shortstop, moved to second with a sacrifice bunt by Bryanna Fuentes, took third on Kylie Wilson’s infield single, and scored on a sac bunt from nine-hole hitter Lindsey McKnight.
The game stood 1-0 until the top of the seventh when Deer Park leadoff hitter Emma Overla doubled and scored on Erin Perez’s first-pitch single to left, and then courtesy runner Hanna York, in for Perez, scored from third on a Morales double that split the gap in right-center giving the Lady Deer two insurance runs going in the bottom of Pearland’s final at-bat in the seventh inning.
Pearland closes out another successful softball season with a 32-10 mark.
