San Diego High School Baseball : Granite Hills Turns Break Into Win

Granite Hills High School, which seemingly could not get a break or win the big game, finally got a break Friday. And it turned the break into a victory at La Mesa.

Grossmont’s Dave Entrekin booted Steve Friar’s two-out grounder in the top of the seventh inning to score the tying and go-ahead runs for Granite Hills in a 7-3 Grossmont League playoff victory at Grossmont.

Granite Hills (13-4, 21-6) and Grossmont (12-5, 20-7), co-champions of the league, were playing for the league’s top seed in next week’s 3-A playoffs.

Granite Hills needed a victory in only one of its remaining three games to win the league title but lost all three, with two of the games slipping away in the bottom of the seventh inning.

Then the Eagles got more bad news. Thursday, 10 Granite Hills players--four of them starters--decided to take an unscheduled break from school and were not allowed to play Friday.

“You don’t even know what kind of a day I’ve had,” said Gordon Thompson, Granite Hills coach. “‘Going to meetings, calling players up from my JV team. Somehow, we were able to pull it off.”

With Granite Hills trailing, 3-2, in the seventh, Jason DeGroote singled, and with one out, Brian Runge doubled to left-center. The ball was wedged under the fence in left-center field, and was ruled a double. DeGroote, who had scored, was forced to return to third base.

After Shane Boyd flied out, Friar grounded to second. Entrekin’s error brought DeGroote and Runge home.

After a walk, Jeremy Kay hit a home run to right to make it 7-3.

“Bad things have happened to us in the last week, but finally we got something to go our way,” Thompson said.