SOUTHERN SECTION CHAMPIONSHIPS : Hoppie Gets a Grip, Fountain Valley Gets Title : Division I baseball: Catcher keeps hold of ball on play at the plate and Barons beat Lakewood, 3-2.

Fountain Valley catcher Dan Hoppie ran in circles, still clutching that baseball.

A moment earlier, he had been bulled over by Lakewood’s Matt Dempsey, who was trying to score from second on a two-out, seventh-inning single. Hoppie held on and so did the Barons.

Fountain Valley, which flirted with disaster all night, came away with a 3-2 victory Friday to win the Southern Section Division I championship in front of 3,400 at Blair Field. The Barons are the first top-seeded team to win this division since Lakewood in 1970.

And it was over in the blink of an eye.

Lakewood (24-7), the second-seeded team, had runners on first and second when Art Martinez lined a 1-2 pitch into center field. Dempsey hit third as Matt Roman fielded the ball on one hop.

The throw was up the third base line and Dempsey arrived at the same moment.

“That’s a situation where your heart falls out of your left foot,” Fountain Valley Coach Ron LaRuffa said.

Said Hoppie: “I knew the guy was going to try to get a piece of me. I just had to hang on.”

For Hoppie, that was easy.

“Next thing I knew, we had won,” Hoppie said.

It was a hard-earned victory.

The Barons (27-3-1), who did not lose a game outside of Sunset League play this season, scratched and scrounged for everything they got Friday. Lakewood pitcher Luke Fitzpatrick gave up only four hits against a team that had scored 38 runs in its first four playoff games.

Chris Ponchak got the only clutch hit off Fitzpatrick (11-2), as he singled in the second to give the Barons a 1-0 lead.

So the Barons tap danced a little. Two of their runs came without the benefit of hits.

In the fourth, Geoff Wilson walked and later scored on a wild pitch. In the sixth, Wilson reached on an error and later scored the game-winner on a double-steal, as Hoppie got into an intentional rundown.

“In high school baseball, you can’t always wait for the base hit,” LaRuffa said. “When you’re not hitting the ball, you have to make things happen.”

Lakewood couldn’t. The Lancers had runners on base in every inning, but stranded 12.

Fountain Valley starter Luke Hudson wobbled through three innings. Lakewood had two on with one out in the first, but Hudson struck out two to end the inning. The Lancers got seven runners on base against Hudson, but the the only run they got came on a Dempsey single in the third.

Jason Liuzzi, usually a starter, relieved Hudson in the fourth. He had not worked in relief in nearly a month. Liuzzi (8-0) started the season as an afterthought, after having pitched only a few innings last season. But by league play, Liuzzi was the team’s No. 2 starter.

“What can you say about Jason? We didn’t expect anything from him this season and he wins the championship game,” LaRuffa said.

Liuzzi did so on only two days’ rest, having started Tuesday’s semifinal game against La Crescenta Crescenta Valley. Still, he struck out five and gave up only an unearned run, before leaving with two outs and two on in the seventh.

Ponchak came in and got his fifth save, although Dempsey was the only batter he faced.