A frigid wind whipped by the Eucalyptus trees and through the Mills High baseball field on Thursday. But what really left visiting El Camino out in the cold was the pitching of the Vikings' Kyle Vallans.
Vallans pitched a neat four-hitter to defeat the Colts 3-0 and keep Mills (7-9, 6-0) in sole possession of the Peninsula Athletic League Ocean Division race.
The junior left-hander struck out seven and walked three in going the distance.
Even after pitching a gem, Vallans found room for improvement.
"I wasn't locating (pitches) too well today," Vallans said. "It was a good outcome, though."
Said Mills coach Tony Adornetto: "His ball naturally moves, so it will be a good pitch, but he might not necessarily think it's a good pitch just by where it ends up."
Throwing low to mid-80s, Vallans used a fastball, two-seamer and curve to stymie the Colts, who lost to the Vikings twice this week. His one challenging inning was the sixth when, with a three-run lead, he loaded the bases with two out and faced Colt slugger Paul Cormican.
Vallans struck out Cormican with a high fastball after a brief chat with his pitching coach.
"We were just trying to settle him down," Adornetto said. "Sometimes he starts trying to go too fast. We just wanted to give him a breather so he could focus and get the next guy out."
Mills entered the game with a .230 team batting average, but muscled up for seven hits against the Colts, including an encouraging one knock apiece by the bottom three batters in the order, Mitchell Wong, Paul Winakur and Jason Lujan.
Winakur's single to center field in the second inning drove home Sean McHugh who had reached on a two-base error.
The Vikings added two runs in the third on a fielder's choice groundout by McHugh and an RBI single by Wong.
Mills has now scored 25 runs in its last three league games, including Tuesday's important 7-5 victory at El Camino.
"It was an outstanding week," Adornetto said.
As for El Camino (7-10, 4-2) it struggled, with Steve Pastora, Josh Eclavea, Dominic Giuliani and Danny Ruiz managing the only hits.
"It was a tough week," Colts first-year coach Victor Messer said. "We knew Mills was good and we were just hoping to come out on the other side of it. We've lost six games by two runs or less. We lost to Serra in the 13th inning and lost to Menlo-Atherton in the bottom of the seventh. (Mills) came out with great pitching."
Despite the successive setbacks to Mills, Messer is not giving up hope.
"We're not out of this thing at all," he said. "We're not giving up. We think we can still compete for this thing."
El Camino is at Terra Nova at 10 a.m. Saturday. Mills plays host to Jefferson at 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
*****
John Murphy may be followed on Twitter @PrepCat
