Olive Select team defeats Newport PONY, advances to Super Regional

IRVINE – The boys of summer will finally have a chance to start their vacation.

Newport PONY’s 10-year-old All-Stars fell to Olive, 11-5, on Monday evening at Hicks Canyon Community Park. The game resulted in Olive advancing to the Super Regional as the Central Region’s No. 2 seed.

It had been a long road for the Newport All-Stars. The regular season in Newport PONY is 16 games. The All-Stars added 26 games to their slate after the season was over, going 19-6-1 as a unit.

Their journey took them to championship games in the St. Hedwig Tournament, the district tournament, and the Central Regional. In their last two title-game appearances, Newport understood what it was to be the underdog.

Newport was winless in four games against the Irvine and Olive select teams. The inability to create early runs led to its downfall over the weekend, as the momentum swings favored the opposition.

Emblematic of that pattern was a first-inning play in Monday’s runner-up game. Ryan Rakunas appeared to have driven in the first run of the game with a sacrifice-fly to center, but Tomas Cernius threw out Jackson McDonald at the plate.

“Those are plays that set the tone for the game,” Olive coach Mony Sambath said. “We’re the type of team where if we’re not doing good, we can fall apart. That was a big play for us.”

Olive won the district championship game, 4-0, over Newport. Despite its success against the local club, Sambath said this run has come as a surprise.

“We’ve had coaching changes and players leaving,” Sambath continued. “It’s been tough. It’s rewarding right now because a lot of the kids didn’t think that we were going to make it this far.”

A foiled threat for Newport was followed by a pair of big innings. Olive batted around in the first and third innings to take an 11-2 lead.

Dillon DeMarco had a pair of doubles and two RBIs for Olive. Nicholas Santivanez and Cernius each doubled, too.

Newport struck for three runs in the fourth. Jamey Ott had a run-scoring double. McDonald drove in another run with a grounder to first, and the third scored on an error.

The rally had teeth, but Cernius put out the fire by striking out Brady Gadol.

Andrew Niccol threw shutout frames in the fourth and fifth innings, but Newport could not push any more runs across.

“He shut [the door], but they just had too much of a lead,” Newport coach Brent Overfelt said. “They’ve got some solid pitching, so it was probably too big of a hole to dig out of.”

McDonald had two hits to lead Newport’s offense. Ganon Overfelt, Miles Pluma, Brady Annett, and Ott each had one.

Andrew.Turner@latimes.com

Twitter: @ProfessorTurner