El Modena’s baseball players and coaches celebrate Wednesday after winning the title at the Ryan Lemmon Invitational. (Photos: OC Sports Zone, Tim Burt).
It had already been a a very good week for the El Modena High School baseball team.
But it got even better Wednesday night when the Vanguards defeated Woodridge 7-1 in the championship game of the 30-team Ryan Lemmon Invitational at the Great Park Stadium.
“It was a great week for our club really coming together and tonight was probably the most complete game we’ve played the entire year,” said El Modena Coach Josh Kliner, who led the Vanguards the Ryan Lemmon Tourney title in 2018.
“We had good performances here and there from guys, but it was up and down through the lineup. Guys contributed and got their jobs done.”
Starting pitcher Nicholas Santivanez, a sophomore, led the way, throwing a complete game and scattering four hits. He struck out eight.
“Nick was fantastic, a sophomore being in that situation, under the lights, championship game, you couldn’t ask for more, he came out and kind of set the tone early and he just rolled with it,” Kliner said.
To see the slide show, click on the first photo:
El Modena (13-7) gave Santivanez plenty of support too, banging out 10 hits off three Woodbridge pitchers, led by tournament MVP Spencer Jacobs, who was 2 for 3 with a double and a run scored.
“Spencer had a great tournament and came up with some huge hits for us,” Kliner said. “Today he kind of busted the game open a little bit, yesterday he did the same thing so he was consistent all the way through these four games. We gave up three runs in four games.”
Center fielder Nicholas Aufdemberg was 3 for 3 with two RBI and two runs scored and first baseman Cameron Langseth was 2 for 3 with an RBI and a run scored for the Vanguards.
Woodbridge, the designated visiting team, scored a run in the first inning. Nathan Perry tripled and with one out, Matt Kuromoto drove him with a sacrifice fly to put the Warriors ahead 1-0.
But the Warriors (14-6) were shut down the rest of the way and wound up making six errors.
El Modena took advantage of two Woodbridge errors and a walk to score a run in the bottom of the first inning.
The Vanguards added two more runs in the second inning, one coming on a squeeze bunt by Bobby Tobias.
Aufdemberg had an RBI single and Jackson Licata drove home a run with a sacrifice fly in the third inning to put El Modena ahead 5-1. The Vanguards added single runs in the fifth and sixth innings.
“Obviously, we would have liked to play better,” said Woodbridge Coach Ryan Brucker. “It’s tough to make seven errors (six officially) and expect to win. Hopefully we learned from it. I liked the approach we had by some of our young guys like Anthony DeMarcom who got a good hit on the right side of the infield and Nate Perry had a really good tournament for us.”
Perry was named the Warriors’ MVP of the tourney.
“We had a really good tournament up until tonight’s game,” Brucker said. “We pitched really, really well and scored runs when we had to. Sometimes these games happen and El Modena is a really good team and it’s high school baseball and things can get out of hand quick.”
Jake Amundson started on the mound for Woodbridge before being relieved by Justin Durby in the third inning. Kyler Collver came on to finish the game on the mound for Woodbridge.
—Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com
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