Valley Rallies From Slow Start to Beat Glendale

Clipboards flew, chairs were thrown--Valley College Coach Chris Johnson could take no more. After the Monarchs suffered a humiliating loss to Pierce last week, Johnson didn’t think the situation could get any worse.

He was wrong.

Early in a Western State Conference game against Glendale on Thursday, Valley looked terrible. Starter Wayne Schull had faced three batters and had given up two hits and a bobbled ground ball to load the bases.

The next batter, John Bojanac, responded with a grand slam to left-center field, his third home run of the season. Paul Hugasian followed Bojanac with a triple. That’s when Johnson took matters into his own hands.

“I was trying to shake things up,” Johnson said of his theatrics. “The loss to Pierce was pretty bad. That was the lowest point of the season. I didn’t think we could go any lower.”

The Monarchs did not, rallying for a 15-9 victory over the visiting Vaqueros.

Trailing, 8-3, in the fourth inning, the Valley offense finally got into the carnival spirit, scoring 12 runs off three pitchers.

Glendale entered the contest leading the conference in earned-run average, but the Monarchs sent 16 batters to the plate in the fourth, pounded out seven consecutive hits and took advantage of three fielding errors by second baseman Darron McWhorter to break the game open.

Three of the runs were unearned.

With the win, Valley is 4-5 in conference play, 8-14 overall. Glendale is 9-16, 4-6.

“We didn’t give up today,” Johnson said. “We did a good job and stayed in the game.”

And so did Valley reliever Mike Roberts--a bit longer than usual.

After Hugasian tripled, Roberts (1-1) replaced Schull and limited Glendale to five hits the remainder of the game.

“I’m a reliever, not a starter,” Roberts said. “I’ve never had to pitch more than four innings this season. I knew I was scheduled to come in today, but I’ve never had to come in this early before.

“The pitching situation has been pretty chaotic. It’s been a circus around here lately.”

Mark Greenamyer was three for three and John Stephens, E. J. Pape and Vladimir Pajcin each had two hits to pace the Monarchs’ 15-hit attack. Fourteen of the 15 hits were singles.