Baseball: Wolves Keep the Bats Swinging Against Cal

The San Ramon Valley High baseball team had no trouble at the plate on Thursday with 14 hits in their 7-2 win against the California.

The game stayed close in the early innings, with the score tied at 1 after four. After San Ramon loaded the bases in the top of the fifth, senior Bobby Geren singled to right field to score a run. After that, the Wolves opened the floodgates on the Grizzlies, driving in three more runs before the end of the inning.

Leading SRV was senior Ben Fishman, who went 3 for 3 and scored twice. But with six different players collecting RBI's for the Wolves, it was obvious that all the players contributed to the victory.

"Today's game was one of those where we just put the ball in play and did what we needed to," said San Ramon coach Chris deClercq. "There were some individual players with nice hits, but it was really a team efort that got the win."

The Grizzlies weren't without positives, with Cal junior Steven Moen hitting a solo home run to center field in the fourth. But the Grizzlies struggled to get on base, a recurrent problem which has plagued Cal in recent games.

"We're hitting the ball, but we're just not finding the holes," Cal coach Dan Ward said. "We've got to find a way to get hits, though. We need to win the next two games to have a chance at NCS...Without a winning record we can't get in."

While the Grizzlies are struggling to stay above .500 to qualify for the playoffs, the Wolves are likely to finish in third EBAL and are expecting to be seeded in the top six in NCS, said deClercq.

To get to this point, San Ramon Valley has relied heavily on the leadership provided by the eight active seniors on the team.

"These guys are really easy to work with, and they listen and cooperate," senior captain Craig Massoni said. "We all know each other really well and because of that it's not hard to work as a team."

The victory against Cal is the Wolves' fifth win in their last six games, and the team's main focus at the moment is to finish the season strong as they head into NCS deClercq said.

San Ramon plays at Foothill on Tuesday, which topped the Wolves 3-0 in the teams' first meeting this year.

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SRV (15-7, 8-4 EBAL) 010 042 0 - 7 14 0
Cal (10-11-1, 6-6 EBAL) 000 110 0 - 2 5 0

SRV (ab-r-h) Fishman 3-2-3, Cox 4-1-1, Bobby Geren 4-1-1, Massoni 4-0-1, Quinlan 4-0-2, Bedard 4-1-3, Drobny 4-0-1, Love 2-0-1, Tetzloff 1-0-0, Dutto 3-2-1, Brett Geren 1-0-0; Totals 34-7-14.

Cal (ab-r-h) Leon 3-0-1, Sarmenta 3-0-0, Moen 3-1-1, Peter 2-0-1, Elliott 3-0-0, Kochan 3-1-1, Guardino 2-0-0, Coll 1-0-0, Truex 3-0-1, Smith 2-0-0; Totals 25-2-5.

Pitching
SRV: Hochstatter 4+ IP, 2 R, 2 ER, 4 H, 4 K, 0 BB; Popavich 3 IP, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 H, 1 K, 1 BB.
Cal: Stein 5 IP, 5 R, 5 ER, 10 H, 5 K, 0 BB; Elliott 2 IP, 2 R, 2 ER, 4 H, 4 K, 1 BB.

Batting
2B - Kochan (Cal), Bedard (SRV), Love (SRV); HR - Moen (Cal); RBI - Moen (Cal), Truex (Cal), Love (SRV), Bobby Geren (SRV), Quinlan (SRV), Bedard 2 (SRV), Cox (SRV), Massoni (SRV).

Next game: California @ Livermore on Tuesday at 4:00pm; San Ramon Valley @ Foothill on Tuesday at 4:00pm

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