 | | | Orinda All-Stars and Moraga Bolts celebrate Lamorinda's success
after the game Photo provided
| | | | | | The Orinda Spartans 12 and under Pony baseball team peaked at the right time this season, en route to a relatively easy sanction tournament championship in the East Bay Regional tournament held in Vacaville this past week. In total, it took four wins for the Spartans to win this year's sanction tournament, which started last Monday evening in the tournament opener against the Brentwood 2 team. Orinda won, 10-3. From there, the Spartans won a sloppy game played last Thursday night against the historically strong Tara Hills team, 17-9, which set up a semi-final matchup against the Brentwood 1 team.
This time, the Spartans offense proved too strong for Brentwood's top team, as Orinda overcame an early deficit before cruising to a 15-9 victory. With that win, Orinda earned the right to play in the championship game, a re-match against, Brentwood 1.
Spartan confidence soared when starting pitcher Eric Nyman set the Brentwood team down quickly in the top of the first inning and the Spartans' lead-off batter, Clayton Stehr, hit his second lead-off homerun of the tournament to give Orinda an early lead. After Ben Hoxie and Ryan Anderson singled, the Spartans managed to score two more runs in their half of the first to take a 3-0 lead into the second inning.
The Spartans extended their lead to 7-1 in the third. At that point, it looked like Orinda might glide to victory. But Brentwood battled back and tallied five runs in the top of the fourth to pull to within one run of the lead, 7-6.
However, the Spartan's rallied to further regain a comfortable lead and they captured the win, 10-7.
The Spartans now qualify for the second round of sanction play which begins on July 27th in San Jose.
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Lamorinda Weekly, Moraga CA