Camarillo Takes Advantage of Laguna Beach’s Generosity

Laguna Beach’s pitching, offense and defense combined to give Camarillo an easy 9-2 victory in their Pride of the Coast baseball tournament game Tuesday at Estancia High.

Three Artist pitchers limited the Scorpions to four hits. However, they also gave up nine walks, with starter Jim McKibban (3-2), walking five and throwing two wild pitches. McKibban didn’t get out of the second inning.

The Laguna Beach fielders seemed to have almost as much trouble catching the ball as the pitchers did throwing it. There were five errors in the second, when Camarillo scored six runs to take an 8-0 lead.

The Artists also couldn’t hit. A two-run double by Micah Grant in the sixth was the only thing that kept Camarillo left-hander Garrett Valencia from a no-hitter.

Valencia (1-0) struck out nine and walked four in six innings. Chris Carpenter finished the game with a scoreless seventh.

“I’m glad the kids didn’t give up,” Laguna Beach Coach Greg Marshall said. “With the mercy rule this year, we’ve had a couple of games where teams got out to big leads, and you could see their faces ‘Well, a couple more runs and the game is over.’

“So I’m glad to see them play better after the second inning, and break up the no-hitter. I have to take something from this game.”

The game was better looking to Camarillo Coach Scott Cline.

“I originally was just going to have Garrett go five innings,” Cline said. “But after they still didn’t have a hit after five I was going to leave him in until they got one.”

“Garrett hasn’t thrown that much for us, so his effort today was outstanding. But the one thing we have gotten so far in this tournament has been excellent pitching.”