Burt Call guided Mater Dei masterfully

Coaching at the same high school as Gary McKnight and Bruce Rollinson is like hanging out at the same beach as Elle Macpherson and Charlize Theron.

It’s hard to get noticed.

McKnight is the winningest boys’ basketball coach in California history and Rollinson presides over a football program that won two unofficial national titles in the 1990s.

Neither legend’s body of work this year could match that of Burt Call. The Santa Ana Mater Dei baseball coach guided a team that had lost its best player and only proven starting pitcher to its third Southern Section title and first since 2005.

“It was a pretty amazing run,” said Call, The Times’ coach of the year.

The Monarchs weren’t expected to contend for the Division 1 championship after senior Matt Blanchard suffered a shoulder injury and was lost for the season before the first pitch was thrown. Senior Cory Hahn, the team’s expected No. 2 starter, had not pitched since his sophomore year.

“It put a lot of question marks on how the season was going to go just because we didn’t have that solid base pitcher,” Hahn said.

Mater Dei struggled in the early going as it tried to find a starter to complement Hahn. The Monarchs lost three of their first four games before Hahn won three consecutive starts and Mickey Dunleavy boosted the rotation by going 4-0 in Trinity League play.

It was a confident and cohesive group that entered the playoffs. With Hahn winning three starts and Ty Moore pitching five scoreless innings in a quarterfinal victory over Lakewood, Mater Dei reached the championship at the Diamond at Lake Elsinore.

That’s where the Monarchs assembled the ultimate ending to their storybook season. Hahn and Moore combined on what is believed to be the first perfect game in Monarchs history, with Hahn pitching the first five innings and Moore the final two. Hahn also produced an insurance run with a sixth-inning home run on the way to a 2-0 victory.

And so a team that had started the season with a 17-2 loss to Corona Santiago had bounced back to outscore its five postseason opponents by a combined 36-3.

“To finish it with a perfect game is amazing,” Call said. “A perfect way to end our season.”

ben.bolch@latimes.com