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Irvine players get ready to douse Coach Gabriel Cota (upper right) with ice water after Friday’s PCL win. (PHOTOS: Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone).
Irvine High School baseball players have a favorite saying lately: “Lets have some fun,” which is what they chanted often in the dugout during Friday’s Pacific Coast League game with Woodbridge in front of a big crowd on a hot afternoon at Irvine.
Indeed, the Vaqueros had some fun, capturing a 6-1 victory over the Warriors to complete a two-game league sweep over their crosstown rivals. Irvine (10-11, 5-3) is in a three way tie for second place with University and Portola
Four teams from the league earn automatic CIF playoff berths.
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Senior Adam Valencia, who pitched the first 5 2/3 innings, earned the win. Valencia struck out five, allowed one run and five hits before giving way to Ethan Kim. Roshan Patel came on in the sixth inning and worked out of trouble with two runners on and two outs to end the inning. Patel also pitched a scoreless seventh inning, striking out one.
“We’re just trying to have some fun,” Valencia said. “If we’re having fun, we’re playing good. It started this week actually on the first game of the series (which Irvine won 6-3). We were down, we gave up three runs in an inning and we wanted to have some fun, we were already down, why not? Let’s have some fun. We have a sophomore who is on JV who came up with us during spring break and he kind of started it and we just kept it alive.”
Irvine broke open a 1-1 tie with three runs in the third inning off Woodbridge starter Alex Johnson.
Evan Tamayo, who scored Irvine’s run in the first inning after a single, had a triple to lead off, Valencia drove him in with a single, Owen Featherston moved Valencia over with a sacrifice. Drake Brito singled and Jack Dressendorfer was hit by a pitch to load the bases. Alex Cho reached on an infield error and two runs scored on the overthrow at first base.
“It feels good to finally get over them, it’s been a couple of years of them just beating us over and over again, it feels good to finally get a win against them,” said Valencia. “I’m trying to do everything I can to keep this team alive and bringing the energy to this team to kind of get us to the playoffs and keep us rolling. For the most part, I thought I competed really well and I was able to do my part and keep us in this game and let my offense work for me.”
Irvine was led by Tamayo who was 2 for 4 with two runs scored and Dressendorfer who was 2 for 2 with an RBI. Dressendorfer had an RBI single in the fifth inning, driving in Featherston who walked and stole second.
Irvine got an insurance run in the sixth inning when Kim tripled and scored on a sacrifice fly by Hudson Hall.
“We kind of showed what we’re capable of,” said Irvine Coach Gabriel Cota, who was doused with a bucket of ice water after the game (for the video, go to X @OC Sports Zone.
“We’ve had good weeks and bad weeks and all throughout the season we’ve been really competitive. That’s a great team, they just won the Ryan Lemmon Invitational, so you know they’re a quality opponent and you know that every inning they’re going to compete and I’ve played for and coached with Coach (Bob) Flint and Ryan (head coach Brucker) was here before and they run a quality program and have been the class of the league for the last few years.
“It’s really cool for our boys to see that if you stick to the process and sometimes it works out for you, not always. I really think it came down to having quality at bats, I do want to give a shutout to our hitting coach DJ Daniels who came in, he’s been our hitting guy and has been absolute nails for us. Every single at bat is competitive, and that’s the difference right there.”
After falling behind 1-0 in the first inning, Woodbridge (14-7, 3-5) got even in the second inning. Henry Uhrik and Caleb Camacho walked and Dylan Mutuc had an RBI double. But Valencia struck out the next two hitters, striking out the side.
The Warriors also loaded the bases in the fifth inning with two outs, but came away empty despite having four singles. One runner was picked off.
“We did not compete very well today,” said Brucker, the Woodbridge coach. “We had some opportunities early, credit them, their pitcher pitched a really good game, they just competed better than we did. Certain days in baseball you come out and you don’t deserve to win and today was definitely one of them.
“There are still a lot of league games left and we still have a lot to play for from the standpoint of trying to earn a playoff spot. We will regroup and get to practice next week and get ready for Uni and try to get back on track. We need to fix our problems today, we have to get more competitive at bats and obviously we got to play catch better than we did today in order to win and if we don’t fix that, then you don’t really deserve to be a playoff team.”
Cota, the Irvine coach, said he believed it’s been a while since Irvine has taken a league series over Woodbridge, but he wasn’t that concerned about it.
As for the bucket of ice water after the game:
“It felt great, it’s a hot day, so it felt really good,” Cota said. “I’m just excited. I tell our boys all the time, ‘every league game is created equal,’ it was a great series but now we got to bounce back and have another great series next week.”
—-Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com