CV powers past Foothill
TUJUNGA — For the members of the Crescenta Valley Junior Baseball All-Star Team, it’s about being aggressive and relentless.
That’s the exact formula Crescenta Valley Coach Peter Cosfol would like to stick with in the pursuit of winning a District 16 championship and advancing to the Section 2 Tournament. Cosfol must have liked what he saw Friday night.
Crescenta Valley took another step in its quest to move on, as it scored six runs in the second inning en route to a 13-5 victory against Foothill in a winner’s-bracket game at Tujunga Little League Fields.
Crescenta Valley, which received a first-round bye, will next compete in the championship game at 6 p.m. Sunday at Dunsmore Park against the winner of today’s 4 p.m. game between Foothill and Burbank at Tujunga Little League Fields.
“We’ve talked about how we want to punish them,” Cosfol said. “We always try to be aggressive because we know Foothill has got a good team.
“We just go out there and put the bat on the ball.”
Crescenta Valley did quite a bit of that Friday, scoring three runs in the bottom of the first inning to take a 3-0 lead before tacking on six more runs in the second to extend the advantage to 9-0.
Crescenta Valley took a 1-0 lead when Johnny Alvarado blooped a single to shallow left to score Kevin Hello. Jacob Martinez scored on a wild pitch to make it 2-0 before a groundout by Ty Lousararian made it 3-0.
Crescenta Valley didn’t stop there, sending 10 batters to the plate in the second frame.
Martinez, Lousararian and Jacob Cook had run-scoring singles to key the surge.
“We needed to keep scoring runs because they have a good coach and they are aggressive,” Cosfol said. “They kept on fighting back.”
Foothill Coach Dave Miller, whose team opened the tournament Wednesday with a 4-3 victory against Burbank at Dunsmore Park, said Crescenta Valley’s second inning proved to be too much for his team to overcome.
“At 3-0, it wasn’t bad and we had a chance to score in the second inning,” said Miller, whose team had two runners on base with one out and couldn’t capitalize. “CV just opened it up in the second inning and it basically snowballed from there.
“We didn’t quit and we got some runs. Now we have a quick turnaround. We should have confidence, having beat Burbank the first time. Hopefully, we can then get to Sunday.”
Lousararian had a two-run single to make it 11-0 in the third, but Foothill scored twice in the fourth on run-scoring singles from Omar Perez and Justin French to cut the deficit to 11-2.
Foothill scored two runs in the sixth on a run-scoring single by Morgan Dickerson, followed by a bases-loaded walk to French to close to within 11-4.
Justin Rountree had a sacrifice fly for Crescenta Valley in the sixth to make it 12-4 and Hello came through with a run-scoring single to extend the lead to 13-4.
Foothill closed out the scoring in the seventh on a run-scoring triple by Jack Porras.
Martinez, Christian Castaneda, Lousararian and Cook had two hits apiece for Crescenta Valley.
Porras, Eric Winner and Perez each had a pair of hits for Foothill.
