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June 1, 2026
By Loren Kopff • @LorenKopff on X
IRVINE-If games were won based off regular season and playoff statistics, then the CIF-Southern Section Division 1 championship game would have gone to La Mirada High. The fourth-seeded Matadores were nearly 100 points better than their counterparts, JSerra High, in terms of batting average entering the contest and were the only seeded team remaining in the gauntlet that is Division 1.
La Mirada had at least two runners on base in four of the seven innings, had a pair of runners stranded at third and three more at second. But the Matadores couldn’t get that one key hit to put them in position to win the program’s second CIF-SS softball title as the Lions held off a late rally to capture their first championship, a 3-2 victory last Friday night at Deanna Manning Stadium.
The Matadores, who concluded the season at 26-5, have lost six of seven CIF-SS divisional title games in school history, winning the 1991 3-A championship over Quartz Hill High while JSerra was hoping not to duplicate last season’s Division 2 outcome in the finals, which ended in a setback to Los Alamitos High. The Matadores are now 130-38-2 the past six seasons.
La Mirada loaded the bases with two outs in the top of the third, and had the bases loaded with one out after scoring twice in the fifth to get back in the game. The Gateway League champions also had two on with none out in the seventh, but Lions pitcher Liliana Escobar, a University of Florida commit, struck out a pair in between a lineout to end the game.
“I’m honored to play for this team; I’m honored to be in this position because I know not many girls can be where I’m at, and I’m very grateful,” said an emotional Alison Ortega, the star junior pitcher for the Matadores. “It’s just amazing because it’s been 15 years since we’ve made the finals. So I’m very glad we get to paint that number 26. I’m just glad to be here and even though didn’t win it, I’m just glad that we got the chance to experience it.”
“We had them all game,” said La Mirada head coach Brent Tuttle on the number of runners left on base. “She’s a good pitcher over there; she’s going to Florida for a reason. It was uncharacteristic in the first couple of innings for us. That’s just the way softball is sometimes.”
Tuttle was referring to the two errors his team made within the first six JSerra batters of the game. While those runners were erased by the following batters, it gave the Lions some momentum to score their runs. Brooklyn Lamb, the second batter for the Lions, reached on a one-out error, but was forced at second by Zena Edwards. On a full count, Magenta De Ante singled to the right field corner with Edwards racing around to score.
The next inning began with Leah Arrey reaching on an error before being forced out at second on a fielder’s choice from Ava Van Heerde. After a strikeout, Ava Born doubled to the right field gap and on the next pitch, Annabel Raftery doubled her in to make it 3-0.
“We had been playing really good defense all throughout the playoffs and that first inning was just weird,” said Tuttle. “You never know; nerves or whatever it is. But you have to come back from that, and we tried.”
After that, Ortega, a Harvard University commit, settled down to retire 11 of the final 14 batters.
“In the beginning, I just had jitters, and I was just taking it all in,” said Ortega. “I felt like in the beginning, I was just being cautious and really just letting loose on my pitches. But then after that second inning, I realized that…I needed trust my pitches, trust myself and focus on what I can control and what I can do for my team.”
The beginning of the game was nearly identical to the semifinal game of the Dave Kops Tournament of Champions on Mar. 7 in Bullhead City when the Lions scored three times in the bottom of the first and defeated the Matadores 5-2. La Mirada was limited to four hits, and its runs came on a two-run home run from junior catcher Riley Hilliard, a University of Oklahoma commit, in the sixth inning.
“We knew they weren’t going to give up without a fight, and we knew that they were a pretty good team,” said Ortega. “We knew it was going to be a hard game, and we learned throughout this game that…[Escobar] got us with a lot of rise balls in Bullhead City and I’m glad my team was able to make adjustments at the plate and really focus on making contact, which we did.”
The Matadores didn’t have many opportunities in that contest because Escobar and Abby Ford combined to allow four hits and strike out 17 batters. In fact, junior shortstop Reese Hilliard, who has committed to Stanford University, and her sister accounted for two hits each.
“If you looked at it, the freshmen were awesome today,” said Tuttle of the difference between the two games. “[Freshman second baseman Fatima Serna] might not have a had a hit, but she hit the ball hard a couple of times. If you look back at the stats, they were all [hitless] in the Bullhead game. [Freshman left fielder] Alanna [Adams] picked up two hits [tonight] and [freshman center fielder] Milani [Cruz] picked up a hit. The freshmen hurt a lot; [but] they’re not freshmen anymore. They’re just going to get better.”
After a perfect top of the first from Escobar in which she threw a dozen pitches, she hit Serna with one out in the second and walked freshman second baseman Rylee Thurmond with two outs before Escobar posted her third strikeout of the inning and fourth through the first eight batters of the game.
With one out in the third, Adams singled to left field and Escobar walked Riley Hilliard and sophomore right fielder Elizabeth Biado with two outs to load the bases. But Serna lined out to Angelina Jimenez on a full count,
The next scoring threat came two innings later and this time, the Matadores cashed in as Cruz blooped a single to shallow left to lead off the frame before Adams beat out an infield bloop single between first and second.
Two pitches later, Reese Hilliard singled to left to bring in Cruz before Escobar intentionally walked Riley Hilliard to load the bases. Now with one out, Adams scored on a sacrifice fly from Serna before sophomore first baseman Juliana Rivera reached on JSerra’s lone error of the game to load the bases again. But a fielder’s choice ended further damage, and Escobar would strike out all three batters she faced in the sixth.
“They came out, and they never gave up,” said Tuttle. “We always thought we had a chance. The fans were great today. If you watched the game, everybody thought we outplayed them, but they got the runs early.”
“We had our two best players on the bases, and I know we didn’t get to score, but we just have a bunch of freshmen, and I think this experience shook them and they really understood what it means to play in high school,” said Ortega. “I think this experience will make them push more for next year and know what this heartbreak brought to them.”
The Matadores, with three seniors on the team including starting designated player Bettie Mae Acevedo, are primed to make another deep run in next season’s playoffs, led by the Hilliard sisters and Ortega, and the experience from freshmen and sophomores, who have kept La Mirada’s tradition as one of the best teams in Southern California alive.
“[Division 1] is the toughest division out there, and there’s a reason,” said Tuttle. “This tournament is probably the hardest tournament in the United States. I mean, single elimination…I think when I looked back at it, you might have had seven or eight teams who were nationally ranked at one point during the season in our [preseason] tournament. Both of us were nationally ranked going in, 30 and 35. It’s a dogfight; it’s going to be a dogfight.”
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