One run. Somehow. That’s all Emma Cano had in mind.
“Going up to bat, I was just like, ‘I need to move her on third.’ That’s all I was really hitting for,” the Atlantic Coast senior infielder said.
Instead, the ball that left Cano’s bat blasted open the floodgates for perhaps the weirdest extra-inning finish in Gateway Conference high school softball final history, overcoming five-time defending champion Baldwin 11-0 in eight innings on April 16.
It’s not a mistake: After seven scoreless frames of a pitchers’ duel between Atlantic Coast’s Morgan Brown and Baldwin’s Lilly Hubbard, the Stingrays put up the rare 11-spot in the top of the eighth, turning the tables on the school that denied them one year ago in the tournament for Duval County public schools. Baldwin hadn’t lost a Gateway tournament game since April 16, 2019, a 4-0 defeat to Paxon.
The eighth-inning surge was more than enough run support for Brown, whose one-hit shutout helped bring a fifth Gateway softball trophy to R.G. Skinner Parkway after past triumphs in 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2018.
And it continues the winning momentum for Atlantic Coast (14-7), a team that knows how to bounce back. Bouncing back from their 2025 loss to Baldwin in the Gateway final. Bouncing back from five one-run losses this year, most recently to Spruce Creek on April 10.
“Instead of quitting, they used it to grow,” Atlantic Coast coach Keith Fisher said. “We’ve gotten on a roll here lately, and the team’s really come together.”
EIGHTH-INNING SCORING PARADE
Once Atlantic Coast’s offense accelerated from 0 to 60, the scoreboard flipped from 0 to 11.
Even when Cano stepped to the plate with bases full of Stingrays and nobody out in the eighth, there was no reason to expect the first extra-inning Gateway final since 2017 to end in anything other than a nail-biter.
It didn’t take much, just a bounding ball that glanced off a glove and plated Skye Deans from third for the opening run. That ignited the chaos. A bases-loaded walk. A Josleen Mendoza sacrifice fly. A Brown RBI single up the middle. A boom-boom-boom parade of two-out RBI singles from Sarah Wisniewski, Deans and Stella Lynton (4 for 5). Two more RBI from Cano. Two more from Mendoza. Eleven in the frame.
For Atlantic Coast, scoring fast is nothing new. The Stingrays have averaged 8.4 runs this year, hitting double figures nine times, including every game in Gateway. Even for a team that knows extra-inning adventure, like last year’s 19-18 thriller against Creekside, this one was just a little different.
“We needed to stay confident and we needed to believe in ourselves,” said Cano, a Hamilton College commit with 12 hits in her last 20 at-bats and a .500 season average.
BROWN DOMINATES FOR AC
At the center of the show was Brown, once again starring on the Gateway stage.
“She was just lights out,” Fisher said.
The junior struck out 11 and limited Baldwin to one hit, a single by Hubbard in the fourth. She issued four walks, two of them intentional passes to Baldwin’s dangerous senior slugger Jazmine Ramos-Merced, and pitched out of her only real jam with two strikeouts in the fourth.
“I knew I had my team behind me, and I knew as long as I threw it, they were going to have my back,” Brown said. “Nothing was going to get past my team.”
Brown also topped the 100-strikeout mark for the third consecutive year while slicing her ERA to 1.95. The shutout was her third in the past three weeks, after a one-hitter of Fletcher on March 30 and a two-hitter of Fleming Island on April 2.
For the Stingrays, Thursday’s victory builds momentum ahead of the coming challenges in District 1-7A. The Florida High School Athletic Association ranks Atlantic Coast sixth in Region 1-7A, a probable playoff qualifier but not yet a formal lock.
“Beating that team and showing that we can do it, especially since we lost to them twice [in the 2025 Gateway final and the 2026 regular season], it just boosts our confidence so much,” Cano said. “It makes it more fulfilling.”
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Atlantic Coast wins Gateway softball with 11-run eighth. Here’s how
Reporting by Clayton Freeman, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
