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Crean Lutheran coaches talk with the Saints after Wednesday’s win. (Photos: Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone).
Crean Lutheran High School’s baseball team is aiming for a strong finish in the final weeks of the Empire League season as it battles Tustin and Kennedy for third place.
The Saints looked solid Wednesday, scoring four runs in the first inning before going on to defeat Valencia 9-1 at Crean Lutheran.
Crean Lutheran (12-9, 2-3) is tied with Tustin and Kennedy for the final automatic CIF playoff berth with five league games left. Pacifica leads the league and Cypress is second.
Crean Lutheran reached the CIF Division 4 finals last year losing to Canyon, but has only two starters: shortstop Sho Garcia and catcher Jake Haney back from that team, which was 26-10.
The Saints got solid pitching and timely hitting in Wednesday’s win.
“Calvin (Howard), our starting pitcher, set the tone early just attacking the zone,” said Saints Coach Jake Haney. “What you hope for is that you get off to a good start and then it builds the momentum going forward and it makes the rest of the game much easier when you get off to a good start.
“We had some really good at bats in that first inning too, getting our best swings off as many times as we could and living with the results.”
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Howard pitched four scoreless innings, striking out five, allowing one hit to earn the win. Blake Hendren pitched a scoreless fifth inning, Ben Keller allowed one run in one inning and Max Adams finished with a scoreless seventh.
“Especially coming off the break, we haven’t played in a week, so it was good to get some guys out there,” Haney said.
The Saints took control in the first inning with four runs. Walker Richardson had an RBI single driving in Brady McKay, who doubled,. Then, Davis Rutten, Jackson Haney and Brennan Bates delivered RBI doubles.
Crean Lutheran took advantage of three walks in the second inning to score three runs and take a 7-0 lead.
The only run for Valencia (4-13,0-5) came when Lorenzo Duran walked and came around to score in the sixth. Crean Lutheran also added a run in the fourth and fifth innings.
“It was a great team win, I thought everyone contributed,” said Garcia, who has committed to play baseball at Georgetown. “We started off pretty hot which was a lot of fun to just keep on rolling off of that. And if we just keep it like this we could have a shot at winning and going far into playoffs.
“It’s definitely a young team but I feel Jackson and I are doing a pretty good job at getting everyone to play up to play to their full potential. Our goals for right now are to have fun and make memories but also to make playoffs and make a very deep run into it. When we get hot, we get pretty scary so I think we can do some damage in the playoffs.”
Haney has been impressed with how his players have developed over the course of the season.
“We didn’t have anything back virtually and I didn’t know anything with this group in terms of the personality, we lost a ton of talent last year but not only did we lose talent we lost some really good culture guys that did it right and cared about each other,” he said. “This group has picked up where they left off, even though most of these guys weren’t in the dugout last year.
“These guys are super fun to coach, they care about each other, they’re competitive, they sacrifice, they root for the next guy, this group has been a pleasure to coach.”
The team has experienced some growing pains.
“We put ourselves behind the eight ball in the beginning part of league with a close loss to Kennedy and things fell apart here against Pacifica, it was a game we felt we probably should have won,” Haney said. “But, there are a lot of things that can happen, we just collect wins. We need to collect as many as we can.
“We just go and try and win ball games and see who else wins.”
The teams play again Friday at Valencia.
—Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com
