LA COSTA CANYON HIGH SCHOOL BASEBALL

North County Times

By Terry Monahan

  "VISTA-The trip to the semifinals of the Classic Division in the 60th annual Lions Tournament was just one inning away.

  All the La Costa Canyon High baseball team had to do was survive the seventh inning and the trip to play for a beth in the finals was assured.

  Before that could happen, though, the worst inning of the season happened and the Mavericks' dreams came crashing down.  A six-run seventh inning took an apparant victory away and handed Jupiter (Fla.) a 10-7 win Wednesday at Rancho Buena Vista High.

  "One bad inning got us," said La Costa Canyon coach Justin Machado, whose team had 12 hits and left 11 runners on base. "We didn't play real well fundamentlly and things didn't go our way in one inning."

  To say it was a crazy inning would be an understatement.  It started with a leadoff single and was followed by a fly out.  After that came the nightmare, as two of the runs came in on a bad-hop single that snapped a 7-7 tie and a two run bunt single that skipped into the outfield to close out the inning.

  "We did what we had to do to win, but sometimes it doesn't go the way is should." Jupiter coach, Doug Ferguson could only shake his head at the rally that erased the 7-4 lead for the Mavericks (9-3). "It took seven innings, but we finally did what we should have been doing all day," said Ferguson, whose team improved to 14-3.  "Down three, we were taking a strike, crowding the plate trying take an inside pitch for the team. I told the kids we needed three runners to at least keep playing. I know they feel terrible about how the game finished up. We've all been on the wrong end of an inning like that."

  The rally made a winner out of shortstop Luke Kutsukos, now 1-0, after his first pitching assignment this year.  La Costa Canyon's Casey Connolly, took the loss and is 0-1.  La Costa Canyon, which rallied to tie the game 2-2 in the first inning, trailed 4-2 before scoring four times in the fourth inning.  After plating just one run the first two times they loaded the bases, the Mavs finally cashed in Justin Graeber's single for two runs and Matt Hall's run scoring single for a 6-4 lead. After adding a run in the sixth inning on another single by Graeber, who was 2 for 2 with two walks and three RBI's, the game unraveled.

  "The whole day was frustrating," Machado said. "After the hurt goes away, we have to learn from this, because we'll be in more games like this the rest of the way. It all started so slowly, and once it got going there was no way to stop the game from slipping away. When the ball that should be a ground out skips past us the the bunt gets into the outfield for two runs, yo just know it's not your day."