{"id":1031337,"date":"2026-06-17T01:18:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T01:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1031337\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T01:18:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T01:18:18","slug":"london-hires-2018-state-champion-alana-benitez-to-lead-lady-pirates-softball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1031337\/","title":{"rendered":"London hires 2018 State Champion Alana Benitez to lead Lady Pirates softball"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 The Coastal Bend has seen many coaching changes on the diamond this off-season. On Tuesday, London hired Alana Benitez to lead Lady Pirates softball. She brings a short, but impressive resume from her first season of head coaching at West Oso.<\/p>\n<p>This past spring she led the Lady Bears to their first district championship in program history. They also went undefeated in district. As a player, Benitez was a UIL State Champion with Santa Gertrudis Academy in 2018. Now she is excited for the opportunity at London.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;London has already built a strong tradition of excellence, and I can&#8217;t wait to build on that,&#8221; Benitez said. &#8220;My goal is still to develop the student athletes to play at a high level, to represent the community and to grow on and off the field. I can&#8217;t wait to be working with the players, families, and the community to grow London softball. Go Pirates.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In the spring 2026 season, London fell in the third round of UIL 3A-DI playoffs. Next year London will move up to 4A.<\/p>\n<p>            <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781659098_128_.jpeg\" alt=\"West Oso softball wins first UIL District Championship in program history\"  width=\"1280\" height=\"853\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Arelia Williams<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 The Coastal Bend has seen many coaching changes on the diamond this off-season. On&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1031338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7757],"tags":[45789,103254,284620,748,31481,284621,190420,60016,393,4884,20760,257,20527,16,15],"class_list":["post-1031337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-45789","tag-103254","tag-alana-benitez","tag-britain","tag-coach","tag-coach-hired","tag-coastal-bend","tag-corpus-christi","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-head-coach","tag-london","tag-pirates","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116762818829241512","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1031337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1031338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1031337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1031337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1031337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}