REDLANDS — Sometimes the last three outs in a baseball game are the toughest to get.
That was the case for the Arrowhead Christian Academy baseball team Friday afternoon in a CIF Southern Section Division 3 quarterfinal game against defending champion Beckman.
Bobby Mahoney had a shutout going after six innings, allowing just two hits while walking three and striking out six. And the Eagles held a 4-0 lead after scoring three fifth inning. However, it wasn’t enough at the end.
Behind a pair of seventh-inning home runs, the Patriots took a 5-4 lead and then hung on for the win, earning a Tuesday afternoon semifinal home game against San Dimas.
“Mahoney was incredible for Arrowhead Christian today and had my guys walking back to the dugout just confused as to what he was throwing but they just weren’t ready to go home,” Beckman coach Kevin Lavalle said. “The best compliment that you can give any baseball team is that they are tough and we are incredibly tough.”
Friday’s game was a pitchers’ duel to start, as Mahoney and Beckman starter Nick Molina shut out the opposition into the fourth inning, allowing just one hit while striking out eight and walking one.
Arrowhead Christian scored the game’s first run on a high-chopper Deegan Martinez that found a hole in right field with one out.
The Eagles then struck for three runs in the fifth inning to take that 4-0 lead behind back-to-back RBI hits from Diesel Toth (two-run double) and Moses Trejo (run-scoring single). However, they left an opportunity for a bigger inning on the board as Trejo was thrown out while trying to stretch his single into a double..
Mahoney gave up a leadoff walk in the seventh before Molina’s two-run home run to left center field. He then gave up a single to Seth Sanchez before Eagles coach Clint Toth pulled him for Elijah Humphries with a 2-0 count against Mark Terry.
Humphries started his afternoon with two straight balls to finish the walk of Terry before getting a pop out and strikeout to put the Eagles on the doorstep of a win. But Gus Powell’s three-run homer with two outs sent the Beckman side into a frenzy and gave the Patriots their first lead of the game.
“We were just trying to get the ball into play offensively in those middle innings and once we did that we finally started to string something together offensively against Molina, who threw a great game for them,” Arrowhead Christian coach Clint Toth said. “Bobby gave us every opportunity to win that game, but we just couldn’t finish it off behind him”
Molina finished the game by retiring seven of his last eight batters, just yielding a seventh-inning, two-out single by Daniel Miller. Miller got to third base following a stolen base and throwing error, before Molina got Diesel Toth to pop out to end the game.
“Once they started to get some runs against us we had to step back, take a deep breath and try to reset, knowing that if we could get out of trouble we were still in the game and that’s what we did,” Molina said.
