Estancia baseball back in CIF final after another one-run victory
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Everything has fallen into place at the best moment imaginable for Estancia’s baseball team, which heads into this weekend’s CIF Southern Section finals on a six-game roll and a second title in four seasons in sight.
The Eagles, a most uncertain prospect back in February, have emerged from a roller coaster campaign that hadn’t gone as desired before the playoffs began two Fridays ago steeled by missed opportunities, fused as championship teams should be, and filled with expectation.
Estancia (19-13) rode Nico Viramontes’ outside fastball and a growing knack for two-out heroics in Tuesday afternoon’s semifinal victory over Rancho Mirage, pulling out another tense 4-3 triumph to set up Saturday’s 1 p.m. Division 6 title-game showdown with Marshall (20-6-1) at Cal State Fullerton’s Goodwin Field.
Viramontes (9-0) surrendered two hits and one unearned run while working out of several jams over six innings and the Eagles twice responded quickly to the visitors’ forays to go ahead.
“Our stats are not pretty,” head coach Nate Goellrich said. “Our batting average is the second-worst batting average in my [14-year] history here. Our team ERA is the second-worst. But we’ve come together as a group. The chemistry works. We respond when we’re down, and all that is is heart. And the ability to understand that they can do it and have faith in themselves, have faith in each other. That’s the big thing.
“They’ve come together at the right time. And that’s what you need in the playoffs is that. And can’t ask for anything else out of the guys.”
Estancia turned a two-run deficit into a 3-2 advantage behind back-to-back run-scoring doubles from Sawyer Atkinson and Viramontes, then Vaughn McCrea’s two-out RBI single in the the third. The Eagles answered the Rattlers’ audacious tying run in the fifth with a two-out rally in the bottom half of the inning, bringing home Sean Sweeney on Carlos Hauser’s single to right field.
McCrea got the save with the tying run at third on Jacob Ramirez’s racing, diving catch on a dipping fly to shallow left field.
“I’m at a loss of words right now,” said Viramontes, who fell behind after an error gifted Rancho Mirage (18-13) two runs in the top of the third but twice escaped innings unscathed with runners in scoring position. “We’ve always dreamed for this, and we worked really hard for it, so it’s a great feeling.”
This run, one marked by a first-round stand as Alhambra rallied and last week’s down-to-the-last-out, extra-inning quarterfinal thriller with Pacifica Christian, followed back-to-back, one-run, late-inning losses a month ago to Coast League champion Century, the first with a piece of the league title within reach. That was, Atkinson noted, “not the outcome we wanted.”
“It made us want to win this even more,” Viramontes said. “That’s what we’re doing right now, showing that we deserve to win this.”
Said Atkinson: “I don’t think any of us thought it would go this far. But here we are.”
It came down to a series of battles with Rattlers talisman Kobee Finnikin, their only All-CIF honoree after reaching the semifinals last year. He went two for three, was on base four times, scored twice and stole three bases: second, third and home in succession, the last 90 feet for a sixth-inning tie with a two-out dart as Atkinson, Estancia’s catcher, tossed the ball back to Viramontes.
The Eagles twice duped Finnikin into taking off early, both times from second base, with Viramontes in the first inning and McCrea in the seventh delaying their motions and catching the Cal Baptist-bound shortstop on the basepath. Rancho Mirage had two on with one out the second time.
“We knew coming in their leadoff guy was a little bit undisciplined on the bases,” Goellrich said. “We knew we could take advantage of that. And that was huge for us. Two spaghetti moves, picking him off, taking that away. That’s a lot of their offense.”
Rattlers head coach David Shaw had no regrets.
“We live with his energy and his reads,” he said. “It’s something we will definitely learn from, but I don’t ever second-guess that kid. He’s our fire.”
Estancia’s two-out acumen was pivotal. The Eagles put seven runners on base after the second out, five into scoring position, and, with McCrea’s and Hauser’s singles, brought two of them home.
“It’s something coaches pounded in on us, working with two outs, finding a way on,” Atkinson said. “That’s been a thing all year. We just keep finding our way on with two outs, and that’s what makes our team. That’s what gets us the wins, you know?”
Goellrich said he’s “pretty sure about 80% our runs in the playoffs are with two outs.”
“That just shows the heart, the character of these guys,” he said. “We have that next-guy mentality, and they really bought into that philosophy. So an inning’s never over.”
The Eagles will take that approach into Saturday’s final.
“Baseball is the toughest championship to win, right?” Goellrich said. “We told our guys, even coming into the playoffs, you’re here, go out and win. See what happens. And so for us to be there the second time in four years is huge. But we’re not satisfied. We’ll go out and give us our best shot. And, you know, the goal will be [to go] 1-0.
“Just go 1-0 that day. Doesn’t matter how. Doesn’t need to be pretty. A win’s a win.”
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