PHOTOS: Woodbridge celebrates outright PCL title with victory over Laguna Hills

Woodbridge players and coaches celebrate after winning the league title Thursday. (Photo courtesy Brad Perry).

Down the stretch, Woodbridge High School’s baseball team kept within striking distance of Pacific Coast League leader Beckman.

Monday, the Warriors evened the race with a 6-0 victory over the Patriots on a 90-degree day at Beckman.

Thursday afternoon, Woodbridge completed the mission defeating Laguna Hills 6-2 at Ryan Lemmon Stadium to win the league title outright. Woodbridge players and coaches left the field hoping to earn the outright title and about 30 minutes after their victory, they could celebrate that accomplishment as a result of Northwood’s 5-3 victory over Beckman.

It’s the second straight league crown for Woodbridge.

“I feel good for the seniors, that’s a class that’s done a lot,” said Woodbridge Coach Ryan Brucker, before knowing the result of the Beckman-Northwood game. “They won the league as freshmen and the bulk of them came up as sophomores to play and had a really good year last year to win the league. I feel real happy for them, because they’re a good class and they’ve worked hard and they really led us this year; Dylan Blakey, Sean McCance, Nate Perry, Kyler Collver and Joaquin Alombro all stepped up and had big at bats.

“They’re a really good team and they have good chemistry. We thought a couple Saturdays ago, we put ourselves in a hole by going up to Uni (and losing). It would have been easy for them to go into the tank but they didn’t, they rallied back and now we can call ourselves league champs.”

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Woodbridge (21-7, 15-3) got a strong pitching effort from starter Matt Kuromoto, who allowed two runs and scattered seven hits while striking out seven and pitching into the seventh inning. Brandon Abernathy, who made two outstanding plays in center field, came on in the seventh to finish the game.,

“We’ve been working hard all year,” Kuromoto said. “This was our number one goal for this year to win league. My curve ball has been working for me all year and I used it big today. My curve ball is a killer for me.”

Woodbridge used three walks to load the bases in the second inning. Nate Perry had an RBI single to put the Warriors ahead 1-0.

Coach Drew Hillman’s Laguna Hills team, trying to play the role of a spoiler, battled hard and tied the game 1-1 on Patrick Hurdle’s RBI double in the third inning that drove home Damian Youngman, who doubled.

But Woodbridge countered with three runs in the bottom of the third inning, two coming on a double by Collver. Jake Amundson drove home the other run on a groundout to put the Warriors ahead 4-1.

The Warrriors extended their lead with runs in the fifth inning on a sacrifice fly by Anthony De Marco and in the sixth on Chase Quezada’s sacrifice fly.

Laguna Hills (11-16-1, 6-12) scored again in the seventh when Hurdle drove home Kyler Fitzpatrick, who had singled, on a groundout. But Abernathy was able to notch the final three outs.

“I think they obviously had a couple plays go in their favor and they made some great plays, their center fielder (Abernathy) made two great catches on the run,” said Hillman, the Hawks coach. “They got some timely hitting and did everything you need to do to win a league championship.

“So congratulations to Coach Brucker and his staff. That’s kind of how we’ve gone about our year along, We’ve been close, we’ve battled, we just haven’t made a couple plays here or there and haven’t gone in our favor and that’s why we’re out of the playoff hunt this year.”

Perry and McCance had two hits to lead Woodbridge, which had six hits.

–Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone, timburt@ocsportzone.com