SANTA CLARA — Something had to give.
Two incredibly hot teams met Saturday with the CIF Northern California Division IV title on the line.
Central Coast Section Division V champion Menlo School had won 20 of its last 21. CCS Division IV champion Santa Clara had won 20 in a row.
It came down to a one-run affair. The visitors from Atherton broke up a scoreless battle with two runs in the fourth and made them stand up in a 2-1 victory.
Not without some heart palpitations.
Santa Clara had pulled off multiple astonishing comebacks throughout the season. And when the Bruins, down a run, put two runners on after two were out in the bottom of the seventh, the possibility was right there that they might do it again.
Connor Houle, who had two hits in his first three at-bats, hit a grounder that Menlo shortstop Jack Freehill momentarily bobbled, but recovered in time to flip to second base for the game-ending force out.
While the Bruins were the comeback kids, Menlo was used to winning the close ones.
“We’re 14-1 in one-run games,” Menlo coach David Trujillo said. “We’re used to this situation and wanted it no other way.”
Santa Clara used staff ace Drew Diffenderfer Thursday in an 8-0 win over West Valley-Cottonwood in the NorCal semifinals. The Bruins started Jaxton Chao against Menlo. He pitched three shutout innings before the Knights put together a rally in the fourth.
KC Chavinson hit a one-out single to get it started. Then freshman Zach Roeder perfectly executed the hit and run, grounding the ball through the vacated second base position to put runners on first and third.
“We work on that all practice, we always have a round with the hit and run and I just tried to do my best to execute it,” Roeder said.
Ben Salama flew out to right field with Chavinson scoring the first run. Roeder stole second, his second stolen base of the game, and scored on a single by another freshman, Fletcher Cahill.
No. 1 starter Jackson Flanagan (12-3) went the first four innings for Menlo, allowing two hits, no walks and striking out one. But that was as far as he was allowed to go after pitching six innings Tuesday in a 2-0 win over Las Lomas.
Freshman Liam Widner pitched a scoreless fifth before Santa Clara broke through in the sixth, scoring a run on three singles from Houle, Andrew Traffas and Diffenderfer. Traffas hit one with home-run distance that curved foul earlier in his at-bat.
Shortstop Jack Freehill came in and got the third out on a fly out to left.
John Kepner relieved Chao for Santa Clara in the sixth and retired all six batters he faced in two innings. Santa Clara came to bat in the bottom of the seventh against Salama, Menlo’s closer, hoping for one more come-from-behind victory.
Salama set down the first two batters he faced before Zach Gallegos reached when Menlo’s shortstop was unable to get a handle on his sharply-hit grounder. Chao got on after a pitch ticked off his helmet before the force out at second ended the game.
“He’s our leader,” Trujillo said of Salama. “He’s one of the best arms we’ve got.”
Menlo (24-8) won its first NorCal championship after losing to Woodland Christian 3-2 in the Division V final last year.
“We made it to the NorCal championship last year but lost, so our mindset this year was not only to win CCS, but to come back to NorCals and win this time,” Freehill said. “We moved up a division and won. It’s an amazing feeling.”
The Knights were 3-7 at one point this season (playing Serra and Los Gatos the first two games of the season certainly contributed to the slow start) before winning 21 of their final 22 games.
After the opening NorCal playoff win over Las Lomas, Menlo went to Woodland Christian, the same team it lost to last year in the D-V final, and led 15-11 in the eighth inning when the game was called due to darkness. The team drove home and then back to the Sacramento area on Friday to record three outs to end the game. Then it was the short trip down to Santa Clara on Saturday with the title on the line.
An unforgettable season came to an end with a tough loss for Santa Clara.
“A game like this between two great teams comes down to fundamentals,” Santa Clara coach Pedro Martinez said. “Today they were better than us, so tip your hat. Nothing to be sad about. We accomplished so much at Santa Clara.”
Several Santa Clara players will continue their careers at local community colleges. Traffas and Chao are headed to Ohlone. Kepner and Diffenderfer will play at West Valley, catcher Charles Conley at Gavilan.
“We wanted to prove a lot of people wrong,” Kepner said. “A lot of people didn’t believe we’d be good enough to win the league, let alone win a CCS title, let alone make it this far.”
He reflected on how much it hurt to come up just short:
“It’s pretty painful,” Kepler said. “You sit there and think about all the sacrifices people made for this team. Everyone stepped up when they had to, everyone stayed ready, and just the brotherhood we had. The memories we made and all the fun times we had. Now it’s over but even if we’d won it would’ve been over. I love all these guys so much.”
