Willow Glen Resident

Sports

Rams riding through roller coaster season

By Bob Scudder

The roller coaster season on the baseball diamond for the Willow Glen Rams continued to hold to form over the past couple of weeks. After knocking out a pair of solid wins over Westmont to climb above .500 both for the season and in Blossom Valley Athletic League Mt. Hamilton Division play, the Rams ran into division leader Leland.

The Chargers sent the Rams plunging again as Willow Glen came up short in two attempts against Leland, dropping to 5-7 in BVAL competition and 7-8 overall.

"They hit the ball hard and often," Willow Glen coach Bret Gladden said as he described the Leland offense. "But we had guys all over the bases and couldn't get them in. We had runners on second and third with one out, second and third with no outs, first and third with one out and just couldn't get that hit."

In the other dugout, the hits came fast and furious as Leland exploded for 15 runs on 13 hits to hammer out a 15-4 win. The Chargers used the long ball to do most of the damage, launching four round trippers on the day.

After giving up five runs to open the game, the Rams came back to chalk up two of their own in the bottom of the first with a little help from the Chargers. The Rams combined a Leland error, a sacrifice fly off the bat of Jose Torres and a passed ball to push across a pair of runs.

As Gladden pointed out, the Rams had plenty of chances to make things interesting but could not find that key base knock. They didn't break back into the scoring column until the seventh inning. Both Torres and Mike Roseland picked up an RBI with a single and sacrifice fly, respectively, to drive in Cory Kingston and Dewey Rogge.

Junior Kyle Lundquist started on the hill for the Rams and was tagged with the loss to drop to 2-3 on the year. "He got the first batter on three pitches and things looked good," Gladden said. "Then things got bad and that was tough for him because he likes to compete."

That competitive spirit was evident in a 4-3 win over Westmont. The Rams were locked in a 2-2 struggle in the third when Lundquist was called upon to come in and relieve Jason Gibilisco. Willow Glen had used base hits by Kingston, Jason Jeffrey, Torres and Roseland to take a 2-0 lead in the top of the third before Westmont came back to tie it with two of its own in the bottom of the third. Lundquist took the hill and went the remaining four innings and gave up only four hits and one run in the bottom of the seventh before nailing down the win.

The Rams broke the deadlock with two scores in the top of the seventh. Anthony Gotelli got it going with a base hit followed by a pair of RBI doubles ripped by Brandon Mendoza and Jeffrey. That gave Lundquist a 4-2 edge to work with, but he made things interesting.

He opened the seventh by giving up two base hits sandwiched around hitting a batter which brought Westmont to within one at 4-3. The Rams' defense came through with a 6-4-3 double play, but that left the tying run at third. Lundquist proceeded to plunk another batter and then went to a 2-2 count on the next hitter before getting the final out on a pop up to the infield.

"He was cruising through the last three innings, but he never seems to make it easy," Gladden said. "That's why we call him Mr. Excitement. He's a young gun though that we will count on next year."

Another pair of junior hurlers that are filling spots for the Rams are Greg Kompelien and Matt Reiton. Gladden described Reiton as a "nibbler who has a good splitter and needs to make sure he has great location to be effective."

Torres was "dealing" in his outing against Westmont as he fired a 3-hit shutout to secure a 7-0 win. The Rams only got five hits of their own but they bunched them all together for a seven run outburst in the fourth inning. The fireworks all came with two-outs.

Gregg Garrity sparked things with a double on a hit and run that scored Gotelli all the way from first. Kingston blasted a triple while both Mendoza and Jeffrey roped two-baggers. By the time the dust had settled, seven runs had crossed the plate and Torres was on his way to claiming a win.

Willow Glen has no regularly scheduled BVAL games on the docket this week with spring break in effect but will take on Santa Teresa on April 20 in a division game to make up a rainout. The Rams will also host a non-league game against Hillsdale on April 21. Game times are set for 3:30 p.m.