Tuesday was a beautiful day for baseball at Bellarmine Prep and with an even sunnier result for the homestanding Bells.
Bellarmine continued its winning ways, defeating St. Ignatius 2-1 in the opening round of the West Catholic Athletic League playoffs. The victory sent the Bells (21-6) into the semifinals for a 7:30 p.m. Wednesday game at Santa Clara University against regular-season co-champ St. Francis (24-3).
With the score tied at 1-1 in the bottom of the sixth, Scotty Jarvis put the Bells ahead by lining a Jack Schoenberg 3-1 inside fastball over the wall in left-center field for a solo home run.
“It felt good. First varsity home run, and it put us in the lead”, said the junior shortstop of his go-ahead homer.
Jarvis had a big day, going 2-for-3 at the plate.
In a strong defensive game overall, each starting pitcher was on top of his game from the beginning. Jonathan Hernandez (2-0, 0.42) pitched 4 2/3 innings for St. Ignatius, surrendering only one run on four hits against the Bells. For the Bells, Kevin Crane (5-3, 2.33) threw four innings, giving up just one run on a second-inning home run to Wildcat star and University of Oregon recruit Matt Krook.
Following Crane’s performance, senior Sam Fontaine (6-0, 0.00) came on in relief for the Bells, shutting down the Wildcats for the rest of the game. Fontaine, who has not given up a run all season, has been a stellar reliever for the Bells. The senior left-hander threw three shut-out innings, striking out four, and walking one with no hits allowed.
“I thought it was just a good game," Fontaine said. "Kevin pitched well (also); he battled really hard out there, and my teammates came through with clutch hits and it was just a good game.”
“Anytime you can get a win, especially in a playoff like this, that’s outstanding”, Bellarmine coach Mike Rodriguez said.
The victory was the Bells' ninth consecutive.
“Well anytime you’re playing well, that’s a good thing," Rodriguez said. "You want to be playing your best when you have to play the best competition, and that’s what we’re getting into now. What’s going to be the final four within our league -- every team is a very good team, good hitters, good pitching, and you have got to be playing well in order to beat them.”
St. Ignatius, which made the league playoff finals last season before losing, was disappointed at the outcome.
"It's a tough loss," Wildcats coach Matthew Stecher said. "Bellarmine is a great, talented team, well coached, and they played well. I also am very proud of my guys -- they pitched well, they played good defense, they were in it the whole time, and I’m very proud of the effort they put forward.”
Now SI will look forward to CCS where it hopes to win a second consecutive section title. The Wildcats are projected by Prep2Prep as the No. 12 seed in Division II.
“We’re probably going to be a low seed, but to get ready for it we’re going to try to be relaxed, take an easy- going approach to it, not lazy, but we are going to try and wake up our bats and get some more hits and more runs.”
