For second straight game, big inning powers Serra to comeback win, first CCS baseball championship in 16 years​on June 1, 2025 at 5:26 am

Serra used one more big rally to come back from a two-run deficit and beat Valley Christian for its first Central Coast Section title since 2009   

 

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SAN JOSE — It can be hard to make history at Serra.

The San Mateo school is famously excellent across a variety of sports. But it had been a while since the Padres won a Central Coast Section baseball championship.

Not anymore. Facing a two-run deficit in the early innings, Serra rallied for three runs in the fourth, and the Padres’ pitching held the line to secure a 3-2 win and their first Division I championship since 2009.

Serra had a similar comeback against St. Francis in the Division I semifinal, scoring six runs against the Lancers in the third inning on Wednesday. But this rally will be remembered as the one that broke an uncharacteristic decade-plus streak of section championship futility.

The Padres are most famously the school that raised Barry Bonds and Tom Brady. But that undersells the Serra baseball program’s sustained greatness.  

Serra (26-6) has now won seven section championships, including three of four from 1993-96, and finished as runner-up six other times. Now, the Padres are back on top and back on the map. 

“I’m so happy for these guys,” second-year Serra coach Mat Keplinger said. “Nobody expected it from this team after graduating 18 seniors last year, but it was something that fueled us all season. We knew we were a talented club, and for them to come together, especially these seniors, the two-year run that they’ve had, the work ethic, changing the culture of the program, their legacy is going to going to last for a long time, and I’m going to miss the heck out of these guys.”

Valley Christian (25-7-1) was the early aggressor on Saturday night. The Warriors took the initial lead in the first inning when Brock Ketelsen led the game off with a single, Christian Navarez singled and Ketelsen scored on a safety squeeze by Jordan Ortiz. 

The Warriors doubled their advantage in the third. Kelan Cunningham led off with a single, Ketelsen advanced him to second with a groundout and Quinten Marsh scored him with a single to right. 

Serra had a quick and lasting rebuttal in the fourth. Jack Armstong got things going with a leadoff single, then Tyler Harrison drew a walk. 

Aaron Minton then came through with the biggest hit of the game, a frozen-rope double down the left-field line that scored both baserunners and tied the contest 2-2.

Serra took the lead when Evan Bradshaw’s infield single scored Minton later in the frame.

“It’s a resilient group, and they believe in themselves,” Keplinger said. “They play for each other, and it continues to show. We really focused on breaking the game down to thirds and playing it inning by inning and pitch by pitch. That’s something that we’ve worked at for a long time and they’ve bought into it, and that’s the result.”

While a seven-inning baseball game cannot be divided evenly into thirds, Keplinger said the Padres divide it into the first three innings, the middle innings and the final two frames. 

With that in mind, when Serra’s offense came through in the fourth, the Padres’ pitchers suddenly had a lot more to work with. 

Riley Lim, who started the game, pitched a clean fifth to give Serra a shutdown inning. Then Nate Hui took over, finishing the final third with two shutout frames.  

Valley pressured Serra all the way to the bitter end. In the seventh, Ethan Flynn led off with a walk, then Cunningham bunted him over to second.

Ketelsen walked to give the Warriors two runners on, then Flynn advanced to third on a passed ball. At that point, VC coach John Diatte pushed his chips in. 

Diatte called for another safety squeeze, but this time, Serra was ready. Hui fielded the bunt attempt from Narvaez and flipped the ball to home plate backhanded, beating Flynn in plenty of time.  

Valley Christian still had one out to play with. And to make matters even more nerve-racking for Serra, Hui committed a balk while facing Marsh, moving Ketelsen and Navarez to second and third. 

But in the midst of the chaos – some self-created – Hui came through. He struck out Marsh and his .518 batting average looking on an outside breaking ball, securing the section title for Serra. 

“He has been our guy at the back end of the game all year,” Keplinger said of Hui. “He’s pitching in the biggest moments, and he’s made it interesting a lot of those outings. That’s when he thrives. He’s done it all year. Somehow, someway, we get the best hitter to the plate with the game on the line. Nate has been in those moments, and championships are supposed to be hard to win. We earned it.”

Along with Serra, Valley Christian’s season will continue in the CIF NorCal regional tournament, and the Warriors will have a few days to lick their wounds before returning to battle on Tuesday. 

“You can’t take away the pain, the sting of a big loss like this,” Diatte said. “There’s just no way to take it away. And if it doesn’t sting, then the guys that you have playing for you, you don’t want those guys on your team anyways. You want the guys that it hurts when you lose a big game.

“And it hurts. It stings right now, and they’re trying to work through that. It hurts for me too. This was the 14th time I’ve coached in the CCS championship game, and it (still) stings. There’s no processing that. If it gets old, then I need to get out. And the same thing for the kids. If this is not something that we can grow from because of the hurt from it, then we shouldn’t have been playing in the first place.”