Only 1 Step Remains for Simi Valley : Southern Section baseball: Pioneers rout Notre Dame, 10-0, play Esperanza Saturday in first title-game appearance in school history.

Something’s got to give when the Simi Valley High baseball team applies the pressure.

Tuesday night, Notre Dame gave way as the Pioneers rolled to an easy 10-0 victory in the Southern Section Division I semifinals before an estimated crowd of 1,000 at Blair Field in Long Beach.

Simi Valley, ranked No. 1 in the nation by USA Today, has been looking good all season. And in seasons past during the 15-year reign of Coach Mike Scyphers.

But the Pioneers, all dressed up, finally have somewhere to go.

Simi Valley (27-3) will play Esperanza (24-5), a 2-0 winner over Crespi, for the Division I championship Saturday night at Anaheim Stadium. It will mark the first championship-game appearance in school history.

Esperanza defeated Simi Valley in the semifinals in 1986. That season, Simi Valley also was ranked No. 1 in the nation behind pitcher Scott Radinsky, now with the Chicago White Sox.

But that was then. And this is . . . not good enough.

“It’s satisfying, yeah,” Scyphers said. “But we still have one game to go. Really, we’ve accomplished nothing so far.”

Notre Dame (22-6) never had much of a chance. Simi Valley stroked 11 hits, stole five bases and stifled the Knights on a combined two-hitter shared by the staff’s trio of right-handed aces: Bill Scheffels, Trevor Leppard and Bill Treadway.

Scheffels (11-1), a junior, struck out five and faced only one batter over the minimum in four innings, yielding a third-inning single to Gerry Del Valle.

Leppard, a senior, entered in the fifth and turned up the flame, striking out three in two innings.

Treadway, a senior who has appeared in three consecutive games since returning from a shoulder injury suffered three weeks ago, faced four batters in the seventh, yielding a walk.

“You may see the same pattern Saturday,” Scyphers said. “We’ll take a look at Esperanza’s tape and see what kind of pitcher will beat them.”

Notre Dame managed only six baserunners, one of which reached third. The Knights also committed four errors, all of which led to runs.

“It didn’t look like anything I’d seen,” Notre Dame Coach Tom Dill said of his team’s performance. “We set the tone early with the way it was going to be.”

Simi Valley went right to work on senior left-hander Chris Leveque (12-2), pushing across three first-inning runs with one hit, three walks and three stolen bases, including a double steal by Ryan Briggs and Aaron Whitley.

Briggs scored on a wild pitch, Whitley scored on a groundout by Kevin Nykoluk and Pond scored on a sharp single by Ryan Hankins.

“We couldn’t have written a better script for our first inning,” Scyphers said. “We watched what they did on tape and put pretty good pressure on their defense.”

It was typical of the Pioneers’ attack. But so was their four-run outburst in the second inning.

Nykoluk, a senior who has hit four home runs in the playoffs, highlighted the inning by crushing a ball to left field that would have carried out of most high school fields. However, the blast short-hopped the wall to the left of the 387-foot sign and went for a two-run triple.

Hankins followed with an infield single to give Simi Valley a 7-0 lead. By then, it was only a matter of how much.

“We really wanted this bad,” Nykoluk said. “Since the beginning of the year, this is what we’ve been working for. We just had to get it going.”

Scyphers said he is “leaning toward Leppard,” as a starter Saturday “with no hesitation to go with Treadway.”