IRVINE — The Rio Hondo Prep softball team had no problems scoring runs on its way to reaching the CIF Southern Section Division 6 championship game.

The Kares scored 58 runs over four playoff games and tallied 23 runs in their victory over Adelanto in the semifinals.

But against University of Irvine on Friday in the championship game at Deanna Manning Stadium, the offensive explosion never came as the Kares lost, 4-1.

It was their first trip to the finals since 1979.

Inning after inning Rio Hondo Prep waited for its offense to spark. The Kares got a leadoff double from Tara Riley in the bottom of the seventh followed by Allie Scott’s single.

“I was really fired up and banking on us winning it,” Riley said.

But the big run-producing hits and scoring barrage never materialized.

Riley had doubles in the third and seventh innings and made it to third base each time. She scored the Kares’ only run in the fifth inning.

“Although it hurts a lot I thought we tried our best to play as a team,” Riley said. “Even when were down and stressed about making plays, we still did our best to get hits when we could and make plays when we could. There’s always next year.”

Rio Hondo Prep had a runner in scoring position in all seven innings and had two runners in scoring position in three innings. The Kares left nine on base.

“Execution, not being able to bunt it when we needed to bunt it, stuff like that,” Rio Hondo Prep coach Joe Parker said of the missed opportunities. “We had some mistakes we haven’t been making the last four games unfortunately.”

University pitcher Carson Cruz allowed seven hits, but she also had nine strikeouts. Three of her strikeouts ended innings and scoring chances for the Kares.

Parker wasn’t exactly thrilled with some of the called third strikes.

“The adjustment with the pitcher (Cruz) and she’s throwing everything outside made it tough on us today,” Parker said. “Kudos to her and they definitely had the right umpire for this game.”

Parker thought the rally would come because he had grown accustomed to seeing it.

“The last four games they’ve just come back and come back,” Parker said of the team’s players. “That’s kind of been the trait of this team, that they don’t give up.”

It was tougher to take because it was the Kares’ best pitched game of the playoffs. The four runs the Trojans scored were the fewest the Kares allowed in the playoffs.

Pitcher Allie Scott went four innings and gave up all four of the Trojans’ hits in the contest. She was charged with three runs when she couldn’t get out of the fifth inning, which is when things started to unravel.

Gidget Smith gave the Trojans a 1-0 lead with an RBI triple in the second inning. It stayed that way until the fifth inning when Scott’s throwing error at third base allowed the Trojans to score a run. That was followed by a hit batter with the bases loaded to make it 3-0.

It could have been much worse.

Bryce Johnson relieved Scott with the bases loaded and still no outs in the fifth. Johnson managed to limit the damage to just one more run and a 4-0 deficit.

Johnson was solid the rest of the way. The Kares had a chance to come back, but they couldn’t take advantage of it.

Rio Hondo Prep made it 4-1 in the bottom of the fifth when Riley scored on Janna Taflinger’s RBI single.

Scott thought the team’s pitching was good enough to win Friday, and she echoed her coach’s thoughts about the strike zone being tough to figure out.

“I think we did good on that part,” Scott said of the Kares’ pitching. “With the umpire, it was kind of hard to work in the strike zone. You have to have a defense that will back you up on every play and sometimes that just doesn’t happen.”