Defense Fails Laguna Hills; Norwalk Wins

Solid defense helped Laguna Hills reach the Southern Section Division 3-A baseball quarterfinals.

But six errors and a sudden shift in the wind prevented the Hawks from going any further.

Norwalk took advantage of Laguna Hills’ uncharacteristically poor fielding to score two unearned runs and defeat the Hawks, 4-3, Friday at Laguna Hills.

Norwalk (16-7) advanced to the semifinals against Chaffey, a 1-0 winner over La Serna. Pacific Coast League co-champion Laguna Hills finishes 20-9.

“We didn’t play defense like we usually do,” Laguna Hills Coach Pete Tereschuk said. “That was a season’s worth of errors for us in one day.”

Despite the numerous miscues, Laguna Hills nearly pulled out the victory. The Hawks trailed, 4-3, in the bottom of the sixth but had the tying run on second with two outs when Brett Nista launched a deep drive to left that appeared to be a potential game-winning, two-run homer.

But the wind held the ball up long enough for Norwalk left fielder Manny De la Cruz to make a leaping catch near the top of the fence to rob Nista of extra bases.

“I thought it was going off the fence, at least when (Nista) hit it, but the wind here is so weird,” Tereschuk said. “That’s the way it went all day--we didn’t get the big hits, and we didn’t make the routine plays.”

Laguna Hills took a 1-0 lead in the first on Mike Messinger’s RBI single, but Norwalk tied it in the third with an unearned run after two Hawk errors. Norwalk’s Matt Erles hit a home run to lead off the fourth and give the Lancers a 2-1 lead, but Jason Pierson homered in the fifth for Laguna Hills to make it 2-2.

Norwalk got another unearned run in the sixth after Brad Baker gave the Lancers a 3-2 lead with a home run. The Lancers loaded the bases with two outs and scored when Messinger couldn’t handle Louie Guerrero’s hard grounder to third.