SOUTHERN SECTION BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIPS : La Quinta Uses Seniority to Win 2nd Championship : Division III: Aztecs’ 8-4 victory over Santa Margarita marks the end of a high school career for eight starters.

A magnificent era came to a remarkable conclusion Saturday at Anaheim Stadium.

Eight of the nine starters for La Quinta will graduate this week, knowing their 8-4, eight-inning victory over determined Santa Margarita in the Division III championship game made them the first county team to win back-to-back Southern Section baseball titles.

Yet, accomplishing the feat wasn’t a foregone conclusion.

The Aztecs (28-3-1) were trailing, 4-2, in the seventh, but tied it against reliever Chris Tessman on an RBI triple by C.J. Livernois, and a run-scoring single to left by Corey Fox. In the eighth, La Quinta loaded the bases with none out, scored twice on a throwing error by catcher Paul Nicotra--the Eagles’ fifth error of the day--and added two more on infield outs.

Craig Jones--who started the first 4 2/3 innings for La Quinta and re-entered the game in the seventh to quell a Santa Margarita rally--was the winner. It was his 15th victory (against no defeats), tying the single-season county record set by Andy Messersmith (15-3) in 1963. La Quinta’s Charlie Tuggle, who began the game in center field (three hits, two runs), pitched a 1-2-3 eighth for his second save.

Santa Margarita finished 22-8.

The victory concluded a tremendous run for La Quinta, which was playing in its third consecutive final. Last year the Aztecs defeated West Torrance, 3-1, for the title; they lost their first championship bid to Tustin, 3-2, in 1993.

“This group has accomplished so much with what it’s had to work with,” La Quinta Coach Dave Demarest said. “You don’t see many La Quinta players drafted by the pros; I don’t think we’ve even had a junior college player the last three years. In my 22 years here, we’ve never won the freshman league.

“This has just happened. They came together as a group, and grew together as a group. They’re not arrogant, they just have a low-key confidence. This is the greatest thing to happen for our community; I’ve never seen anything draw our community together like this baseball team.”

After claiming his bit of history, Demarest was asked if Saturday was his last game at La Quinta.

“Right now I plan to be back. But I want to see if I have the energy it takes to run the program correctly. I wouldn’t come for the ego gratification if I felt I couldn’t do the job.”

For the second time in the past three years, the title game was between two county teams. And these were two of the division’s hottest: La Quinta brought an 11-game winning streak into Saturday’s contest, and Santa Margarita had won its last 12 in a row.

But traditions were quite opposite. The Aztecs had made the playoffs 17 of the past 18 years. The Eagles--whose school did not open until 1987--were making only their second appearance in the playoffs and their first in the final.

La Quinta took advantage of two singles and a wild pitch by Santa Margarita starter Ryan Reightley scoring two runs on a sacrifice fly by Livernois--who fouled off five consecutive 1-2 pitches--and a squeeze bunt by Fox.

The Eagles had outscored their opponents, 43-7, in four previous playoff games, but were shut down the first four innings by Jones. In the fifth, though, Santa Margarita came to life.

With one out, Jim Luster’s sacrifice fly drove in Barry Hawkins. The next hitter, Brian Griffin, pounded a deep fly to left that appeared to hit the foul pole. But instead of a home run, the umpire ruled the hit a triple.

Griffin said the umpire told him the ball hit the pole below the fence, and the ball was still in play.

No matter. After Tim Clark relieved Jones, Mike Penney tripled home Griffin and scored moments later on a Nicotra single. And when Chris Markey slugged a homer in the bottom of the sixth, the Eagles thought the game was theirs.

“I thought we had them,” Santa Margarita Coach Tip Lefebvre said. “We had the guy we wanted in there [Tessman], but we didn’t make the plays. We tell kids that you win and lose games by doing the little things, and that’s what La Quinta did.”