Rancho Santiago Leads the Way in Baseball Playoff Pairings

Rancho Santiago, the champion of the Orange Empire Conference, is the top-seeded team in the Southern California baseball playoff pairings announced Monday.

Cypress, Riverside and Saddleback also earned berths in the 16-team field.

Rancho Santiago plays host to No. 16 San Diego Mesa Friday in first game of a best-of-three series, which ends Saturday with two games if needed.

Friday’s game starts at 2 p.m. and Saturday’s is at 11 a.m.

Rancho Santiago (34-9) closed the regular season by winning its final 14 conference games. It was the sixth conference title in the last eight seasons for Rancho Santiago. Cypress won the other two.

“We like where we’re at,” Rancho Santiago Coach Don Sneddon said. “Again, it shows the strength of the conference.”

Sneddon, who led his team to the 1993 State title, starts the week with some concerns other than San Diego Mesa.

Kyle Evans, who leads the Dons in hitting (.429), runs (45) and home runs (nine), stepped wrong on first base against Golden West last Thursday and has a sore knee. He left the game in the fourth inning.

Jamie Estrada, the Dons’ catcher, sprained his ankle in the third inning of the same game and has been on crutches since.

“Both of those injuries are of great concern to us,” Sneddon said. “Both are a day-to-day sort of thing.”

Cypress (30-13-1) had a shot at the conference title but lost its final three games. But the Chargers still are third-seeded in Southern California despite not being one of the five conference champions. The Chargers, the defending State champions, take on No. 14 Moorpark (27-13) in the first round.

The playoffs seemed like a distant hope at best for Saddleback (22-17) toward the end of the season, but the Gauchos won their final four conference games--beating Riverside, Fullerton, Orange Coast and Cypress--to finish fourth.

Saddleback, the No. 13-seeded team, travels to No. 4 Chaffey. Saddleback’s surge was led by the offense. The Gauchos outscored opponents, 63-18, in their last five games.

Riverside, seeded eighth, plays host to No. 9 East Los Angeles.

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The rest of the field: Cerritos got the No. 2 seeding and plays host to No. 15 Rio Hondo. Mt. San Antonio, the No. 12 team, is at No. 5 Los Angeles Pierce; No. 11 Los Angeles Harbor is at No. 6 Santa Maria Hancock, and No. 10 Bakersfield is at No. 7 Imperial Valley.

The eight first-round winners then are split into the two groups of four for the second round, which is May 19-21. The games would be played at Rancho Santiago and Cerritos, if each wins in the first round.

The final two teams from Southern and Northern California meet in the State tournament May 27-29 at Fresno.

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Top track: Orange Coast’s Mike Hancock was selected Orange Empire Conference runner of the year and Golden West’s Rick Zumwalt was picked as the field athlete of the year by the conference coaches.

Both athletes are freshmen but with an asterisk.

Hancock, who is 21, spent two years on a religious mission before returning to OCC.

He won the 800 and the 1,500 at the conference meet and won the 800 and was second in the 1,500 in the Southern California preliminaries.

Zumwalt, 29, is taking a second turn as a standout athlete at Golden West. Zumwalt was an all-conference defensive end for the Rustlers (1985) and went on to play at Arizona State.

Zumwalt won the Southern California decathlon championship and also took first in the 110 hurdles at the conference meet.

The Southern California meet is Friday at Bakersfield and the State meet is May 19-20 also at Bakersfield.

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Softball: The fact that Rancho Santiago, Cypress and Fullerton earned playoff berths isn’t much of a surprise. The three are among the top programs in Southern California and have been in recent years.

Cypress, for instance, has reached the State tournament the last six seasons.

But Saddleback will join the postseason fun and that is a bit of a surprise.

The Gauchos were last in the playoffs in 1988, a year after winning the State title. The change came at the top in Saddleback’s case.

Nick Trani took over as Saddleback coach this spring after six seasons at Orange Coast, during which time he won two conference titles and reached the State tournament three times.

Trani led Saddleback to a fourth-place finish this season and the No. 14-seeded Gauchos (22-14) play No. 5 Hancock at 2 p.m. Friday at Cypress.

Notes

Keith Burke, a former standout defensive back at Orange Coast, has signed with Ottawa of the Canadian Football League. Burke, from Edison High, was an all-Big Sky Conference performer the last two seasons at Montana . . . Saddleback plays host to Pasadena in a softball game at 3 p.m. today.