Fountain Valley Surge players and coaches line up after Harvard Park after winning the sectional championship Sunday. (PHOTOS: Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone).
It was an exciting final day of the Irvine Pony Bronco 12-and-under sectional baseball tournament at Harvard Park in Irvine Sunday with big crowds cheering on their teams on a warm day.
In an elimination game in the morning, Olive of Orange rallied from an early deficit to take a 12-7 lead late over Los Alamitos and extended the lead to 13-7 but Los Alamitos rallied to cut the margin to 13-11 on a three-run home run by Parker Tannabe-Grossman in the seventh inning.
Olive survived the comeback and sealed a 13-11 win to advance into the championship game against undefeated Fountain Valley about 30 minutes later.
To see the slide show, click on the first photo:
Olive, which had one loss, needed to defeat Fountain Valley two times to win the title. But Fountain Valley won the outright title with a 12-2 victory in a game called after six innings and was presented with the tournament title banner.
Fountain Valley suited up only nine players for Sunday’s game with some players missing due to other commitments or injuries, according to Manager Ellis Fortman who led the team along with Coach Kristopher Packwood.
“We had only nine today, but honestly, through the whole tournament, everybody played so hard and were the best versions of themselves and they really fought,” said Fortman. “It was amazing, I’m super proud.”
Both Fountain Valley and Olive, the top two finishers in the tournament, advance to the regional tournament beginning July 10 in Placentia.
“It was really just a team effort, keeping the bats alive and really just getting the runs in and not leaving many people on base,” said the Surge’s Zach Wiesner who had two hits, tworuns scored and three RBI to cap a big weekend. “The pitching was amazing, not too many runs.
“We knew it would be a tough road but we knew we could prevail through. We have such good team morale, we can pick each other up and we just push through.”
Wiesner had a walk-off single in the extra inning victory over Olive Saturday. He was the catcher and also pitched during the weekend.
“It was amazing, I knew my team could do it together, I had to push through for my team,” he said.
Olive Manager Adrian Rios was proud of his team’s effort over the weekend and excited that it qualified for regionals.
“What an amazing opportunity, we are so blessed just to be able to qualify,” Rios said. “We played against very competitive teams. Surge is on fire, they’re doing well right now and we will take it into the next round and be ready for the challenge, we’re excited to be able to participate and represent Orange Olive.”
In Sunday’s game, Ryker Morledge got the win on the mound for Fountain Valley, pitching the first five innings, allowing two runs, both unearned.
“He’s been an ace, really all season and he hasn’t had a lot of chances to go that long with that many pitches,” Fortman said. “But for what he did today is just remarkable, he mixed fastballs with a slider and a change-up and honestly, his slider was unhittable and really had the batters off balanced all game and that really set the tone.”
Austin Okos finished pitching a scoreless sixth inning for the Surge.
Fountain Valley scored three runs in the top of the first inning. Jaxon Parr had an RBI double and Okos drove in two runs with a single.
In the bottom of the first inning, Perigee Nguyen reached on an error for Olive, stole second and scored following singles by Bryson Long and Nick Padilla-Crain to cut the lead to 3-1.
Olive added an unearned run in the third inning to make it 3-2.
But Fountain Valley put together four hits, including an RBI double by Nick Gough, two hit batters and an error in the fourth inning to score five runs and move out to an 8-2 lead. The Surge added a run in the fifth and three more in the sixth to account for the final margin.
Other top hitters for the Surge Sunday included TJ O’Barr, who scored three runs, had two hits and an RBI; Okos, who had three hits and three RBI; Wyatt Middleton, who had two hits, a run scored and an RBI; Gough, who had two hits, an RBI and a run scored; and Kaden Fortman, who scored a run and had two stolen bases.
Padilla-Crain had two of the hits for Olive in the second game.
In the first game, Olive was led by Castro who went 3 for 3 and the top pitcher was Abel Marataz, who “did exceptionally well on the mound. He was throwing some off-speed pitches and kept them off balance,” Rios said.
Olive also had some great defensive plays, the manager said.
“Perigee Nguyen made an amazing, acrobatic diving catch in center field and there was some great play by Bryson Long as well,” he said.
—Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com
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