After winning the Sac-Joaquin Section Division 5 blue banner on Saturday, May 23 over Casa Roble, the season wasn’t over for Escalon’s varsity softball team.
They earned a berth in the NorCals by virtue of the Section championship and went in as the number five seed in the California Interscholastic Federation Northern Regional Championships in Division IV.
By the end of the tournament, which ran from June 2 through June 6, the 2026 varsity Lady Cougars had put themselves in the record books – as the first Escalon softball team to earn a NorCal title.
They started on the road, traveling to Martinez to face the number four seed Alhambra Bulldogs in the opening round on Tuesday, June 2.
The final score was Escalon 6, Alhambra 5, as Escalon held off a late charge by the host team and escaped with the first round victory.
Escalon scored a run in the first and three in the third to go up 4-0, but Alhambra scored two in the bottom of the third to trim to the lead to 4-2. Escalon got two insurance runs in the top of the fifth, leading 6-2, and Alhambra scored three runs in their final at bat in the bottom of the seventh, though Escalon did hold on for the 6-5 win. Escalon had seven hits on the day and committed two errors; Alhambra had five hits and no errors.
Leading Escalon offensively was Tenley Adams, with a home run and three RBI. Teammate Arianna Velsco had a triple and drove in two runs on the day. Madi Babasa and Kyla Holback each had a hit and scored a pair of runs, Adams and Velasco also scored. Lauryn Siegel had two hits and Jayci Trimble added one.
Adams got the win on the mound.
Tuesday’s win put Escalon on the road for a long trip to Cottonwood, near Redding, for a semifinal game on Thursday, June 4 against the number one seed, West Valley Eagles.
The final there saw West Valley rough up Escalon by a 14-5 final, the host team scoring a run in the first, two in the second, four in the third, three in the fourth, and two each in the fifth and sixth innings.
Escalon scored two runs in the first to take an early 2-0 lead and then scored two more in the top of the second, leading briefly 4-1. They would add one more run in the fifth; the Lady Cougars had 13 hits while West Valley had 17 hits. Escalon used three pitchers – Adams, Siegel and Holback – but had trouble containing the West Valley offense.
Adams had two runs batted in on the day while Babasa, Lizzy Allan and Velasco had the other RBIs. Allan had a double, Velasco had two and scoring the runs were Babasa, Holback and Siegel with one each, two by Velasco.
And while the 14-5 loss to the top seed in Division IV seemed to have put an end to Escalon’s season, they would get an unexpected reprieve, when it was determined that West Valley had used an ineligible player due to her playing for her travel softball team while also still playing for her high school team, a violation of a CIF rule.
West Valley had to forfeit the game, giving Escalon an opportunity to play in the championship contest.
After shedding their tears Thursday and saying goodbye to their teammates – since school was over as of May 29 – the squad had to quickly get back into game-playing mode.
Their trip on Saturday, June 6 was to Alisal High School in Salinas, with the number two seed Alisal Trojans hosting the Lady Cougars.
Again, the underdog Escalon girls built up the early lead – then had to hold off Alisal in the final inning – to bring home the first ever NorCal softball title for the school.
“Just going out to practice and having that talk of ‘You have to give it your all, you have to fight the whole time’ because there’s no way that the other team is going to think that you should be there, so you have to prove yourselves,” head coach Lexy Underwood said of the discussion she had with the team as they met Friday morning, knowing they would suit up for one final contest on Saturday.
To their credit, she said, Escalon made the most of the golden opportunity.
“We surely did (prove ourselves), we showed up, we played hard, we did everything we could in our power to win this game,” Underwood shared. “It was all the way up to the last inning; it got interesting towards the end there but we were able to pull it off and it was just a great game. These girls know that you have to fight every day, you have to put everything out there on the field to win and that’s truly what happened.”
The teams were evenly matched, with the first two innings going by with no one scoring. Escalon did put four runs on the board in the top of the third and held on to that 4-0 lead through six innings. Alisal battled back, however, and pushed two runs across the plate in the bottom of the seventh, their final at bat, before the last out came with a batter taking strike three, setting off the celebration.
As far as the scoring, Escalon played a little small ball to get things going.
Senior Babasa put down a bunt to the third base side of home to reach first with one out in the top of the third. Holback then worked out a walk and the two pulled off a double steal, putting runners at second and third.
Velasco put down the suicide squeeze bunt and Babasa slid in safely to home, with Holback ending up on third and Velasco getting all the way to second. Senior Allan hit a solid fly ball to left field that was in the glove of the Alisal player but then popped out, going for a two-base error as Holback and Velasco – running on contact with two outs – both came around to score to make it a 3-0 lead.
Jayci Trimble then had a solid RBI double to drive in Allan for the 4-0 lead.
Each team had some chances to score in other innings but Escalon had just the four spot in the third, with Alisal scoring two in the seventh.
A leadoff walk, a passed ball and a ground out got the Alisal runner to third, followed by another walk to put runners on the corners. After a pop out to shortstop Velasco, the next Alisal batter slapped an RBI single to left field to make it 4-1. The next batter went to left-center field with a solid single, making it 4-2 as another run came in. That gave Alisal runners on first and third with two down.
But the final out was recorded on a strikeout by Adams, her sixth of the game on a called third strike, and the Escalon varsity softball girls earned the Division IV Softball NorCal Championship.
EHS Principal Jason Furtado made the trip to the game and accepted the plaque on behalf of the school from CIF officials and presented it to head coach Lexy Underwood and assistant coach Bo Underwood, Lexy’s dad, with the team cheering and then swarming their coaches. The girls also received their CIF NorCal championship medals, and posed for plenty of photos with family and friends that had made the trip to Salinas.
For the game, Escalon had four runs on five hits with no errors; Alisal had two runs on six hits with one error.
Alisal finished with a 22-6 overall record; Escalon closed out their campaign at 18-11, winning both a Section title and a NorCal championship to cap off an amazing season.
