Olive Pony team reaches championship game of regional tourney with victory over Irvine

Joe Velazquez of Olive Pony is congratulated by teammates after hitting a home run Saturday. (Photo: Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone).

Olive Pony Orange captured its third straight win in the regional tournament defeating the Irvine Colts 13-4 Saturday afternoon to move into the championship game Sunday at 11:30 a.m. at Harvard Park.

The winner of the tournament earns a trip to the zone championship while four others earn berths to the super regional. Irvine needs to defeat Los Alamitos Sunday morning at 9 a.m. to earn a rematch against Olive in the finals. The Irvine-Los Alamitos winner meets Olive.

“I think the game yesterday clinched a berth into the super regional,” said Olive Coach Greg Cicero. “Tomorrow, it gives the winner the opportunity to skip supers and go straight to zone, so it’s definitely an advantage to win a championship here in regionals because there are a lot of good teams here in Southern California so if you don’t have to see them that’s probably a good thing.”

Olive broke the game open early with four runs in the first inning. Gavin Klovstad knocked in a run on a groundout and Christian Cicero had an RBI single and Talyx Silva and Eli Guerra had RBI doubles.

Olive added two more runs in the second inning and four in the fourth, two coming on a towering home run by Joe Velazquez, who had four RBI and four runs scored to lead the attack.

“Joe leads our team in home runs this year and he got a pitch he can hit and I was happy to see that because he’s been a little bit pensive and I thought it was really good for him to let it go,” Coach Cicero said.

Christian Cicero also hit well, going 3 for 4 with two runs scored and two RBI. Klovstad scored three runs.

Irvine battled until the end and scored the first runs that Olive has allowed in the tournament with four runs in the fifth inning. Nick Chapman walked, Jacob Deprima singled and Tyler Hiraiwa reached on a bunt single. Aaron Yen then drove in a run on a perfect squeeze bunt, Mory Tsuge knocked in a run on a groundout and Tanner Hays walked with the bases loaded for the other run.

The tournament is one of three hosted by Irvine Pony this weekend.

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