Laguna Beach first baseman Dylan Yencho and pitcher Lucien Reed celebrate Wednesday’s PCL win. (PHOTOS: Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone).
Laguna Beach High School’s baseball team continued to shine in its first year in the Pacific Coast League, defeating Northwood 7-0 Wednesday afternoon on a cool day at Northwood.
It was the fourth shutout of the year in league play for Laguna Beach (18-2, 9-0). The Breakers were moved from the Sunset League to the PCL this season and with five more league games are closing in on the league title this season.
Junior Branson Wade (8-1) pitched the first six innings striking out 11 and allowing just one hit. Wade, a Loyola-Marymount University commit, struck out the side three times. He did not walk a batter and hit one batter.
Senior Lucien Reed pitched a scoreless seventh inning.
To see additional photos, click on the first picture:
“We’ve been working really hard in practice the last couple weeks about jumping early in counts and not taking too many pitches,” said Laguna Beach first year head coach Ryan Belanto. “I thought we did a really good job of swinging at some good fastballs and then Branson just went out there and dealt.
“He’s been good all year, he’s around the zone, he throws all of his pitches for strikes. He’s got a fastball, slider and change-up.”
Belanto wasn’t sure when the Breakers’ last league title was but he’s enjoying the team’s big bounce back year. The Breakers were 10-17 last year in the Sunset League.
“It’s been a while, we’ve been in the Sunset League for a while, not too many in that one,” he said. “We had a lot of guys coming back from last year and we had some success early and I think they started to buy in to what we’re trying to do and we pitch really well and we hit the ball extremely well, we’ve got a batting average over .300 as a team on the year and we have five guys on the mound who I trust to go out and do their thing.”
Laguna Beach wasted little time taking control of the game in the first inning, scoring three runs off Northwood starter Evan Shinegawa, two coming on a double by third baseman Lincoln Adams driving in Otis Boultinghouse, who singled and Becker Sybirski, who was hit by a pitch.
Another run scored on an error, one of five on the day for Northwood (8-13-1, 4-5), which is still fighting for a CIF playoff berth.
Adams also had a two-run single in the second inning when the Breakers scored three more runs to take a 5-0 lead.
Laguna Beach extended its lead to 6-0 in the third inning. Reed singled and with one out and scored on a double by Thomas Gonzales. In the fourth inning, Boultinghouse reached on an error and came around to score on another error.
Northwood had two runners reach second base. In the third inning, Ethan Tsou singled and stole second but Wade struck out the next two hitters.
In the fifth inning, Bert Chubb was hit by a pitch and stole second but was stranded there.
“I thought overall it was a good team win, it’s good to win 7-0 and be 9-0 in league, it’s been a change for sure because we normally haven’t been that good,” said the 6-4 Wade. “But this year, it feels different, I’m happy with the change. I feel like this year we want it more, we want to win this year really bad.
“Our goals for the rest of the season are to win CIF, and just keep getting better.”
Northwood coach Ben Owens credited Wade for his effort.
“Wade was good, you got to give credit where credit is due,” said Owens. “I know he’s really good, he’s been really good in the league, so hopefully we would scratch and claw a couple, but that didn’t happen. We just have to move on to Friday (at Laguna Beach) and we will see where we go.”
Owens had been encouraged by the Timberwolves play of late. Northwood had a three-game league winning streak snapped Wednesday.
“We’ve kind of figured some things out,” he said. “We’re hitting a little bit better, obviously today might be an anomaly, I hope we get back out here tomorrow for practice and fine tune those little things that didn’t go right today and get back to where we were the last two weeks, which has been in a really good place and find a ways to get hits and score runs.
“We’re still in the playoff hunt and I think we still control our own destiny, if we can steal one Friday, that would be awesome but we’re just taking it one game at a time now and not looking at other results and see where we can go with five (league) games left.”
The ace of the Northwood staff, USC commit Paul Grossman, is expected to pitch Friday.
—Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com
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