Bellarmine’s Boras title shows WCAL’s depth
How good is the baseball this season in the West Catholic Athletic League?
The league's fifth-place team celebrated a big achievement, winning the Boras Classic championship last weekend with a 5-4 walk-off victory over JSerra-San Juan Capistrano at Santa Clara University.
To reach the title game, the Bells had to win the Boras' Northern California championship, which they did for the second year in a row, with wins over Pleasant Valley-Chico, Davis, Cardinal Newman and Franklin-Elk Grove.
But this time, the final was virtually in Bellarmine's backyard. Having to travel all of 1.4 miles to Schott Stadium, the Bells made the home half of the seventh count. Gio Saso started the rally with a one-out double, and Nolan Downey followed with a winning hit, a memorable way to give coach Mike Rodriguez his 200th victory.
“To have that momentum boost toward the end of the year before going into the playoffs hopefully is going to be really big for us,” Rodriguez said.
Bellarmine is playing in the WCAL tournament this week.
The semifinals were played Wednesday. The final is Thursday at SCU.
Milestone
There was only one memento that Stuart Piraro wanted after his 300th victory as Lincoln-San Jose's baseball coach last week.
In his 200th and 300th career wins (it was his 351st overall victory last week), Piraro had his team sign a baseball and then brought it to his dad's grave site in San Jose. So he asked this year's team and coaches to sign the ball that Weston Scoffone used to throw the final pitch of the game.
“My father meant a lot to me. He was always supportive, like my mother, of my brother and me,” said Piraro, whose brother, Sam, is the coach at Willow Glen after a long run as San Jose State's head coach.
Nice bookends
Los Gatos opened its season with a nonleague victory at St. Francis and closed the regular season with a victory Saturday at Serra.
But …
“We need to figure out the middle part,” coach Nate Anderson said.
Los Gatos (20-7, 11-3) finished second behind Palo Alto (20-6, 13-1) in the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League's De Anza Division. Both are participating in the league's playoff this week before moving on to the Central Coast Section playoffs next week.
Power ball
Nick Cirelli's home run last week gave De La Salle 20 for the season, a school record. Chris Santiago hit a home run earlier in the game as the sizzling Spartans cruised past San Ramon Valley 7-1 for their 14th consecutive win.
Out of nowhere
El Cerrito's Karl Collins started the North Coast Section boys Division I singles tennis tournament as an unseeded player.
He finished it as an NCS champion.
Collins, a sophomore, won three of his four tournament matches in straight sets as he roared to the singles championship. He is the first unseeded player to win the NCS Division I boys singles title since 2012, when Albany's Andrew Gu won the first of his two titles.
Hitting the road
Leland's football team will travel to play Liberty of Peoria, Arizona on Sept. 14. Liberty will play at Leland the following season. “This is a great test for us,” Leland coach Mike Ward said. “They have a fantastic program year-in and year-out.”