Canyon’s comeback falls short against Linfield Christian in Ryan Lemmon Invitational

Canyon Coach Jason Smith and his assistants with players after Monday’s game. (PHOTO: Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone).

Canyon’s baseball team made it interesting at the end Monday afternoon in the Ryan Lemmon Invitational at the Great Park Stadium.

The Comanches tried to battle back from a 7-0 deficit and brought the tying run to the plate in the seventh inning before losing to Linfield Christian 8-6. It was Linfield Christian’s second win in the tournament.

Canyon is 1-1 in the event, presented by the Ryan Lemmon Foundation.

“They’re a good team, I don’t think we played up to our level, we gave them a couple runs early defensively,” said Canyon Coach Jason Smith. “We had some breakdowns and we didn’t make an adjustment offensively early enough in the game to make fly ball outs.

“Once we started putting the ball on the ground, they started to kick the ball around a little bit. Overall, we battled for seven innings, we made it a ball game at the end so that’s a positive with our guys.”

Linfield Christian moved ahead with two unearned runs in the third inning off starting pitcher Kemuel Zhang. Drew Taylor singled and with one out, Kai Carson walked. The runners advanced a base on a wild pitch and both scored on an infield error with two outs.

Linfield Christian added five more runs in the fifth inning. Brody Vizenor and Landon Waddell had RBI singles in the inning.

Canyon got untracked in the fifth inning. Reed Stoneburner walked and scored on a deep home run by John Somerndike, his first of the season, cutting the lead to 7-2.

Linfield Christian scored a run in the top of the sixth inning to take an 8-2 lead.

Canyon countered in the bottom of the sixth inning. Matt Simons had a two-run double to cut the Lions led to 8-4.

Then in the bottom of the seventh, Somerndike was hit by a pitch and scored on an RBI single by Blake Lau. Lau scored on a sacrifice fly by Cooper Stevenson.

But Carson retired the next two hitters to preserve the win.

“Somerndike had a great day at the plate, Logan May came in at the end to give us a good hold {on the mound} and keep it there and give us a chance,” Smith said. “I’m a little bit disappointed, I wish we would have been able to show a little better for ourselves. Because we’re a little better team than what we showed early in the game.

“One thing about our team, we’ve shown that resiliency in a few games this year, we’ve gotten down and we fight until the end and we’ve had a couple late inning wins this year, that’s the one thing our group does is we compete all the way through.”

Both teams continue play Tuesday at the Great Park.

San Dimas, Ganesha, St. Paul, Linfield Christian and Brea Olinda are all 2-0 so far. The final day of the tournament is Wednesday.

The schedule for Wednesday will be announced Tuesday night.

—Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com