CCS Division III baseball: Carmel uses early rally aided by Willow Glen mistakes to set stage for walk-off championship win. Padres advance to the CIF NorCal regional playoffs in extra innings.
CCS Division III baseball: Carmel uses early rally aided by Willow Glen mistakes to set stage for walk-off championship win. Padres advance to the CIF NorCal regional playoffs in extra innings.
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SANTA CLARA — Willow Glen found itself behind the eight-ball early in Friday’s CCS Division III championship game against Carmel.
In the third inning, the Rams committed back-to-back errors and found themselves down two runs after Carmel took advantage with a pair of sacrifice flies. Willow Glen responded with a run in the fourth and tied the game in the top of the fifth.
But the Rams couldn’t break through late to take the lead, and that eventually cost them the championship. Carmel walked off a 3-2 win in the bottom of the eighth, securing the Division III title with a walk and two key singles.
“It’s tough when you play great games like that, someone has to win, someone has to lose,” Willow Glen coach Brian Vieira said. “And we just ended up on the wrong end of that one.”
The Rams (23-7) found themselves in a sticky situation when the third inning started with a pair of throwing errors at first base. The end result was Carmel runners at second and third and nobody out.
The Padres (20-10) made Willow Glen pay dearly for its mistakes. Matt Maxon hit a sac fly to right, then Ty Arnold drove a deep fly ball to center, giving Carmel a quick 2-0 lead.
“It was huge,” Carmel coach Mike Kelly said of the early runs. “It was like, ‘We can do this.’ The belief in everything was there. That’s the feeling that permeated over here.”
Willow Glen had an uphill climb from there, and the Rams got to work the very next inning. Miles Austin reached on an error and stole second, then Chris Hudson drove him in with a single to right.
The Rams kept at it in the fifth. Austin Korba singled to right, then stole second. With two outs, Haas Perry singled to right, scoring Korba and tying the game 2-2.
“Our kids battled back and made some great plays,” Vieira said. “We’ve been down before. We won 13 in a row coming into today, and we’ve been down a few times in both of our playoff games. They have no quit. They believed the whole time. And the minute we tied that game, I don’t think anybody in that dugout didn’t think we were going to win. We definitely felt it.”
Willow Glen squandered a golden opportunity to take the lead in the sixth. Austin led off the inning with a double to left, but on Joshua Kaminski’s grounder to short, Austin took off for third on contact and was thrown out trying to advance.
This became a theme in the late innings. In the bottom of the seventh, Carmel led off with back-to-back singles. But Hudson’s throw behind pinch-runner Luke Stiver picked him off second and gave Willow Glen an unexpected first out, changing the complexion of the inning.
Juiced up from the highlight play, Willow Glen pitcher Dante Pini got the next two batters to pop up, finishing a full regulation game with three hits allowed and no earned runs. Pini carried a no-hitter into the fifth inning.
“The season’s on the line, not just the game,” Vieira said. “Our catcher makes the best throw he’s made all season, puts it right on the bag on the backpick.”
In the eighth, Willow Glen found itself back on the cliff’s edge. A pair of walks and a single loaded the bases with nobody out.
But the Rams had one more special play in store. Ben Mudgett made the catch on a short fly ball to center, then whipped a one-hop throw right to Hudson, who tagged out Maxon at the plate.
“He’s done that all year, running balls down,” Vieira said. “He’s just a great talent. And in the biggest situation of the season, he ran a ball down and was able to throw an absolute strike to the plate. The feeling in the dugout of belief, everybody believed. We believed in that minute, and then they stepped up and got a big hit.”
After Mudgett’s throw, the game seemed destined for a ninth inning. But Bo Lewis had another idea.
He laced a single to right, scoring Arnold from second and giving Carmel a walk-off win almost as surprising as the stunning play that immediately preceded it.
Immediately after the glow of a euphoric high, Willow Glen was forced to absorb a brutal season-ending blow.
“When you lose a game like that right at the end, it’s going to be emotional,” Vieira said. “But this team, I’ve never coached a team that is this close. This group of guys has been together, some of them, their whole baseball lives. We have 15 seniors, so they’ve had four years together here. And I know it’s cliche, but it’s like a family. They truly are. They’re like brothers.”
The Rams lingered on the field well after the trophy ceremony, embracing each other repeatedly for the final time in uniform as one. It wasn’t the ending they wanted for their special season, but it had to suffice.
“The emotion is not just losing the game, but the fact that you don’t get to go out there with your brothers, your best friends one more time, practice and play,” Vieira said. “That’s the emotion of it all. How much these guys truly care about each other, how much we care about them as a group. The ride we were on, you just don’t want to ever see it end.”
