Granite Hills Does It All but Still Loses to Grossmont, 8-6

You would think that a team that has 12 hits, hits 3 home runs and allows only 3 hits would win easily. Not the Granite Hills High baseball team Wednesday.

Despite getting only three hits, host Grossmont won, 8-6, to stay alive in the Grossmont League race.

Three Granite Hills pitchers issued eight walks, and the Granite Hills defense made two errors. The key hit came in the fourth inning. After Mike Raskind (4-6) had walked three, Grossmont’s Don O’Brien hit a grand slam to make the score, 8-1.

Mike Rendina (6-2) allowed solo home runs to Pete Staley and Shane Boyd, his seventh of the year, but earned the win. Reliever Mark Gapski gave up a three-run home run to Brian Giles in the seventh.

Second-place Grossmont (15-8, 10-3) trails Helix by three games with three games left. The two play on Friday. Granite Hills is 14-9, 8-6.

In other Grossmont League games:

Helix 11, Mt. Miguel 2--Damon Luban improved his record to 9-1 with a 3-hitter as top-ranked Helix clinched at least a tie for the Grossmont League title with the victory at home. Luban struck out 10. Dan Tiumalu had a two-run homer in the third and Jason Leford had three RBIs for Helix (21-2, 13-0). Mt. Miguel is 7-15 and 6-7.

Santana 8, El Cajon Valley 6--Kyle Sebach hit a solo home run and two run-scoring singles, and John Barnhill (3-0) allowed one run in four innings for No. 8 Santana (18-7, 9-5). Barnhill had 3 singles and Forster 2. Host El Cajon Valley is 6-16 and 2-11.

Valhalla 11, El Capitan 1--John Scurlock threw a 4-hitter and El Capitan committed eight errors as Valhalla won at home. Valhalla (8-17, 4-10) spotted El Capitan (8-14, 3-10) a 1-0 lead after the first inning, but came back to score five runs in the fifth and four runs in the sixth.

TRACK City Western Preliminaries

Charles Huff of La Jolla, the county leader in the triple jump, has not taken a full triple jump in more than a month, but it took only one jump for Huff to win the triple jump and set a meet record in the process.

Huff’s lone attempt of 47-8 3/4 wasn’t up to his county-leading 48-7 mark, but it did break his own meet record of 46-7 set last year.

“He was only going about 70%,” said La Jolla Coach Chuck Boyer.

Kristi Bache of University of San Diego High, who leads the county in the 800-meters (2:13.41) set a meet record in the 3,200 meters in 11:09.2, although it was slower than her best this year (10:53.7). Bache broke the 1980 mark of 11:30.3 set by Lynda Prentice of La Jolla.

Before that, Bache had been planning on running only the 800 and the 1,600. Now, things are not so clear. Bache said she will run only two races at the section meet May 28 and the state meet the next weekend, but she does not know which two.

“I’m probably going to run either the 800 and the 3,200, or the 1,600 and the 3,200,” said Bache. “It’s too hard to double in the 800 and 1,600 because that means you have to run four races in two days (in the state preliminaries and finals). I want to run the 800 because I think that where I have the best chance. But I won’t do all three. I’m not that insane.”

She will run all three at the league finals on Friday at Balboa Stadium.

In other races, Erica Prodanovich of Mission Bay was the top qualifier in the 110-meter (15.5) and the 300-meter low hurdles (45.6).

Avocado Preliminaries

Michelle Dimry of Oceanside jumped a county-best 18-2 in the long jump. Anita Dulay of Orange Glen (17-8 3/4) was the previous leader.

Rancho Buena Vista’s Kira Jorgensen was the top qualifier in the 800 (2:16.2) and the 1,600 (5:02.0), but she will drop the 800 meters at the league finals on Friday to concentrate on the 1,600 and the 3,200. Teammate Angle Mason was the top qualifier in the 400 meters (60.0).

For the boys, Francis O’Neil of San Pasqual ran 1:57.3 to qualify first in the 800 meters.

Palomar Preliminaries

Brent Noon of Fallbrook won the league championship in the discus (170-2) and was the top qualifier in the shot put (59-3) for Friday’s league finals at Poway High.