Clock Strikes Midnight for Whittier Christian

Whittier Christian’s improbable run through the Southern Section baseball playoffs didn’t have a happy ending Thursday night.

Cerritos Valley Christian beat the Heralds, 6-1, at Blair Field in Long Beach to win the Division V championship and cap its own extraordinary playoff story.

Sophomore left-hander Brad Boekestein (9-3) pitched a six-hitter for the Crusaders, who entered the playoffs with a 12-14-1 record but ended them by beating the Heralds for the third time this season to claim their second Southern Section baseball title.

“We played some tough teams in the preseason, and that set us up for this playoff run,” Valley Christian Coach Ryan Vanderhook said. “We came together as a team [at] midseason and carried it from there.”

Valley Christian (17-14-1) took a 2-0 lead in the top of the first inning on a sacrifice fly by Nick Mahin that scored Chase Twedell, who tripled to lead off, and an RBI double from Chad Gabriel.

Whittier Christian starter Anthony Villa (6-9) settled down after at and retired 10 batters in a row, including the first two in the fourth inning. But the next six Valley Christian batters reached base, leading to a four-run outburst highlighted by Matt Anema’s two-run double and a two-run triple off the bat of Twedell that put the game out of reach.

The Heralds’ best chance to get back into the game came in the fifth, when they loaded the bases with no outs on singles by Erik Hughes and Kyle Underwood and a walk to Anthony Ruiz. But Boekestein induced Joey Conrad to ground into a 4-6-3 double play, which scored Hughes. Anthony Esquer then grounded out to end the threat and essentially finish the Heralds, who ended the season with a 17-13 record.

Although they entered the playoffs as a wild-card team, the Heralds outscored their opponents, 49-15, before the final, including a 10-3 victory over top-seeded Riverside Woodcrest Christian in the first round.

“We exceed people’s expectations,” Whittier Christian Coach Brett Thorsteinson said of his school’s first trip to a section final since 1987, when it won the Division 1-A title. “Every year we expect to go the distance, and this shows what hard work can do.”

In the Division VI championship game:

Avalon 7, Boron 6--Roberto Martin (4-3) struck out 10 in five innings of relief and also had the game-winning RBI for Avalon at Blair Field.