Current print subscribers can create a free account by clicking here
Otherwise, follow the link below to join.
To Our Valued Readers –
Visitors to our website will be limited to five stories per month unless they opt to subscribe. The five stories do not include our exclusive content written by our journalists.
For $6.99, less than 20 cents a day, digital subscribers will receive unlimited access to YourValley.net, including exclusive content from our newsroom and access to our Daily Independent e-edition.
Our commitment to balanced, fair reporting and local coverage provides insight and perspective not found anywhere else.
Your financial commitment will help to preserve the kind of honest journalism produced by our reporters and editors. We trust you agree that independent journalism is an essential component of our democracy. Please click here to subscribe.
PHOENIX — Marissa McCann probably needed to strike out 16 Campo Verde batters in order for her team to stay in the winner’s bracket Saturday.
The Willow Canyon senior’s one-hit performance Saturday at Papago Park helped the Wildcats (29-0-1), the top seed in this year’s 5A softball tournament, advance to face No. 2 seed Desert Mountain in Thursday’s next round.
McCann’s 16 strikeouts helped her outduel Campo Verde junior Addison Gavigan. She struck out 10 Wildcat batters for the No. 5 seed Coyotes (20-10), who battle Casteel on Tuesday night in an elimination-round game.
Desert Mountain advanced with a 4-0 blanking of Ironwood Ridge on Saturday.
Willow Canyon coach Donnie Tizzano said CVHS made better adjustments Saturday, but a few key hits — along with big pitches from McCann in key two-strike situations — were key factors.
“‘Riss is dominant every time she takes the circle,” Tizzano said. “We really try hard to not worry about what the umpires or the hitters are doing. We worry about what’s working for ‘Riss, at any particular moment.”
McCann improved to 18-0 as a pitcher this season with the win. She had an 0.31 ERA with only 24 hits surrendered all season coming into Saturday’s game.
She walked only one Coyote batter, and with the Wildcat defense condensing its four unofficial errors into the fourth and sixth innings, WCHS was able to hold the Coyotes scoreless.
The Wildcats’ runs came in the second inning, when Olivia DeFord’s single up the middle brought home Jenna Petersen from second base, and on a bases-loaded sacrifice fly by Harmony Andrade in the fifth, which plated De Ford.
Willow Canyon got to Gavigan for only three hits. She walked three, hit a batter and the Campo defense only made one error.
“(Gavigan)’s really good, and we knew that,” Tizzano said. “Their coaching staff is well-known. They’ve been around a long time. We didn’t see what we scouted. We stayed with our scouting report probably a little too long.”
Tizzano said it was helpful for his team to have to get through a tough, close, low-scoring game at this stage of the 5A tournament.
“You want to be tested,” he said. “You want to be able to control the nerves at big moments and the kids did that today.”
Jason W. Brooks is a News editor for the Daily Independent and the Chandler Independent.
He covers the Chandler area for both yourvalley.net and the monthly print edition while writing for and assisting in the production of the Daily Independent.
Brooks is a well-traveled journalist who has documented life in small American communities in nearly all U.S. time zones.
Born in Washington, D.C. and raised there and in suburban Los Angeles, he has covered community news in California, New Mexico, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska and northern Arizona.
By 
