Cypress Pony Bronco all-stars pose with the tournament championship banner. (Photos Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone)
Cypress Pony’s Bronco 12-and-under all-stars capped a perfect weekend at the Cental regional tournament Sunday defeating Garden Grove 10-0 at Hicks Canyon Park in Irvine.
To see the slide show, please click on the first photo
Cypress will advance into the super regional next week at Whittier. Garden Grove and Newport Harbor will also move on to the tournament.
“I’m so proud of the boys,” said Cypress Coach Jeremy Mayer. “We’re looking forward to it. It’s going to be challenging. We have a lot more work to do. We played a great game, the encouraging thing is we can play even better. The sky is the limit.”
Mayer’s son, Adam, pitched all five innings allowing just one hit. He struck out eight. The game was called due to the 10-run rule.
“He was focused, he threw strikes, he was really unhittable, he had four pitches working, I’m really proud of him,” Coach Mayer said. “He just brought it today.”
Cypress banged out 10 hits, led by Anthony League, who had two hits and scored three runs; Ryan Lee, who had two doubles and two RBI, Aiden Franco, who had two hits and an RBI; Mayer, who scored two runs; and Izeah Reyes, who had three RBI, including a two-run home run in the fourth inning which put Cypress ahead 10-0.
“We’ve been working with him so long and this was his second home run over the fence,” Coach Mayer said. “He’s really got discipline, and he held his weight back and he nailed it. You could see the joy in his eyes when he was circling the bases.”
Cypress scored three runs in the first inning, one coming on a double by Lee. Peter Ottane began the game with a single on the first pitch and came around to score.
Cypress added fuve runs the second inning. Adam Mayer and Aiden Franco had RBI singles, Lee drove in a run with a double and two runs scored when Reyes reached on error.
Garden Grove’s best chance to score came in the second inning. Omar Contreras singled and went to third on a wild pitch. With one out,. Anthony Diaz walked but Mayer was able to work out of trouble.
Cypress set the stage for a big run with a 4-3 victory over Newport Harbor on Friday.
“They’re a very good team and they played us tough,” Coach Mayer said. “We hit a two-run home run (by League) in the sixth inning to win it. That put us 4-2 and we held on.”
Garden Grove also had a successful run, winning its first two games before Sunday’s match-up with Cypress. The team finished the tournament with a 3-1 reecord.
It didn’t go Garden Grove’s way in the first game on Sunday, but Coach Johnny Hernandez remained proud of his team’s effort.
“It was a bad day to an off day, but it happens,” Hernandez said. “That’s what I tell the boys. When you have an off day, you can’t beat yourself up, there’s plenty more baseball to go on. The focus was to come here and get us to super regionals and we did that. It would have been nice to walk out with this banner but that was a plus.
“Stay positiive, keep your eyes on the prise and we’re still advancing. So I told the boys there is still a lot more baseball to go. Don’t let the emotion of this game carry over to the next game. We still got to go out and produce.”
Garden Grove responded in its second game defeating Newport Harbor 4-3 to earn the No. 2 seed from the region. Newport Harbor goes to the region as the No. 3 team.
Also on Sunday, Newport Harbor defeated St. Hedwig 4-3, in an elimination game.
The seven team, double elimination tournament was hosted by Irvine Pony Baseball.
RELATED: Opening round match-ups for super regionals
-Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com
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