PHOTOS: Long Beach holds off Costa Mesa in Pony regional final but both teams move on

Costa Mesa 14-and-under all-stars earned the top seed from the regional. (Photos: OC Sports Zone, Tim Burt).

OC team plays three games in one day and wanted a fourth.

Costa Mesa’s Pony 14-and-under all-stars started their day at 9 a.m. Sunday playing three games in the regional tournament at TeWinkle Park. They would have liked to have played a fourth, said their Coach Ben Lower.

But Costa Mesa could not get past Long Beach Sunday. Long Beach capped an undefeated run in the tournament with a 6-4 victory in the championship game. Long Beach also won a crucial Sunday morning game over Costa Mesa 6-5.

Costa Mesa needed to win the second game of the day between the two teams to force another game Sunday night after the scheduled championship of the tournament, hosted by Costa Mesa Pony.

Lower said his players would have been ready.

“It was a long baseball day,” Lower said. “They kept battling there at the end and came a little too short unfortunately. We just couldn’t quite get enough out of them. But you always love it when they compete and continue to go out there and battle. Long Beach sort of had our number today. We couldn’t figure them out.

“Sometimes in these tournaments, you got to play a lot of games to get there but four would have been good.”

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Long Beach earned an automatic trip to the zone championships as the champion, but Costa Mesa, after a successful weekend, earned the top seed among those teams advancing to the super regional in West Covina.

“The nice thing is if we had won this and been the champion, you sort of skip the super regionals, but we get to keep some steady games going between now and zone, hopefully we can get through super regionals and then go to zone and see where it takes us from there, but we got to be a little smarter on the bases and step up when you have the opportunity to drive some runs in,” Lower said.

Long Beach was led by pitcher Jack Champlin, who pitched the first five innings, allowing one run. He was also 4 for 4 at the plate with two RBI. Jake Torres also had an RBI single in the four-run third inning to help Long Beach move out to a 4-1 lead.

Danny Anderson also scored two runs for Long Beach.

Costa Mesa took an early 1-0 lead in the third inning. Tristan Ramos doubled and scored on an RBI single by Wylan Rottschafer.

Rottschafer also had an RBI single in the fifth inning to help Costa Mesa trim the Long Beach lead to 5-2. Costa Mesa tried to rally but stranded two runners in the sixth inning. Costa Mesa pushed across two runs in the top of the seventh, one coming on a single by Will Morales, but relief pitcher Julian Lucero was able to work out of trouble and preserve the win.

“I was impressed because they work hard together,” said Long Beach Coach Brandon Gershen. “They play as a team and they bought into the team concept and they executed very well, I think that’s the key thing. They understand, it’s outscore the opponent, and that’s what they’re trying to do, outscore the opponent.”

Long Beach also defeated Irvine 11-0; Redondo Sunset 7-0, Placentia 7-0 and Costa Mesa 6-5 in the first game Sunday to earn the trip to the zone tournament.

“That will be nice, it’s a good reward,” Gershen said.

Costa Mesa opened defeating Heartwell 10-3 on Friday, Cypress 11-0 and Heartwell again 3-0. The victory over Heartwell Sunday locked up the berth in the super regional.

“Tristan Ramos had a really good game on the mound,” Lower said. “He did a great job pitching through six and Wylan came in to close us out.”

Ramos had another big offensive effort as well, Lower added.

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An exciting sports weekend, but more stories to tell:

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

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