Simi Valley’s Nykoluk Provides Stirring Finish : High school baseball: His second home run of the game in bottom of the seventh gives Pioneers 8-6 victory over Diamond Bar.

Kevin Nykoluk and his teammates saw their season flash before their eyes Friday.

But in a flash, Nykoluk ended an afternoon of nail-biting and fears of elimination with a two-run home run in the bottom of the seventh inning to give Simi Valley High an 8-6 victory over Diamond Bar in a Southern Section Division I quarterfinal playoff game.

Simi Valley (26-3), ranked No. 1 in the nation by USA Today, will play Notre Dame, a 10-3 winner over Fontana, in Tuesday’s semifinals at Blair Field in Long Beach.

“They’re a really good team,” Nykoluk, a senior catcher, said of Diamond Bar. “They scared me big time.”

The Pioneers hit five home runs and needed every one. The winner, which came with one out and Britten Pond at first, was Nykoluk’s second of the game and fourth in three playoff games. Pond also hit two homers, including a monstrous two-run shot in the third inning to give Simi Valley a 5-1 lead. Scott Miller added a solo home run in the sixth.

“Coming in, I knew this game wasn’t going to be a cakewalk,” Simi Valley Coach Mike Scyphers said. “But that’s what makes championship ballclubs--when your No. 3 and 4 guys step up and do what they have done and then some.”

Yet few expected the Pioneers, who have manhandled most opponents this season, to suddenly find themselves struggling to regain control.

Diamond Bar (22-6), 5-A Division runner-up last season, scored five runs in the fourth off senior right-hander Trevor Leppard to erase a 5-1 deficit and stun a standing-room-only crowd that stretched from foul pole to foul pole.

Leppard, battling wildness from the beginning, walked eight batters in 3 1/3 innings, including five in the fourth.

After a bases-loaded walk, the Brahmas went ahead on a three-run double by Chris Grosskopf, who advanced to third on the throw to the plate and scored on a throwing error by Nykoluk.

After yielding another walk, Scyphers decided Leppard had been given enough rope.

“He’s a competitor and we’re going to give our kids a chance to compete,” Scyphers said. “But we needed for the umpire to see a different pitcher.”

Enter senior right-hander Bill Treadway, who nearly exited for the season two weeks ago because of strained muscles in his right shoulder.

Treadway (8-0), who also could lay claim to game-ball honors, recorded two quick outs to stifle the rally. From there, he retired nine in a row, finishing with 3 2/3 perfect innings.

Treadway, faced with the end of the line once, wasn’t so quick to give in a second time.

“I had big-time butterflies,” Treadway said. “But I think that’s what I ran on. I thought, ‘This is my last game on this field and it could be my last game with these guys.’ ”

Pond and Nykoluk, who hit back-to-back homers in the first inning off senior right-hander Richard Torres, have been offensive catalysts all season. But Scyphers pointed to Miller’s home run that pulled Simi Valley even as pivotal.

Miller, a late-season starter who was hitless in six at-bats during the Marmonte League season, has hit three home runs during the playoffs.

“That home run was humongous,” Scyphers said.

Diamond Bar threatened to trigger a rally in each of the first two innings. With two out in the first and runners at first and second, John Heaton lined Leppard’s first pitch into the glove of shortstop Ryan Briggs.

In the second, the Brahmas parlayed two walks and a single into a run but stranded runners at the corners when Grosskopf hit sharply into a force play.

The Brahmas managed only three hits.

“You get the ball up here and it’s out of the park,” Diamond Bar Coach Kent Neil said. “That’s baseball. Our kids could have folded after they took the lead on us. But we came right back.”