ANTIOCH, CA - Freedom narrowly held onto a 6-5 win over Deer Valley to claim possession of the Bay Valley Athletic League title, its first league title in eight years.
Travis Gobel's two-run double to right with no outs in the top of the fifth gave the Falcons a 3-1 lead, and Kyle Wise's ground ball to second one batter later extended the lead after Gobel advanced on a wild pitch, but the Wolverines did not go away easily.
“I feel amazing [about winning the BVAL]. I’ve been waiting for this the whole year, we battled and battled and finally came out with it,” said Gobel. “ We all played good defense we, and we had a little bit of a struggle there at times, but in the end we came out with the win.”
The Wolverines got one back in the bottom of the fifth, when Justin Tamelier' ground ball back to the mound resulted in an error, scoring Perez to make it 4-2 in favor of the Falcons.
The first run came in the top of the third when the Freedom's Neko Capsiliaris drove a ground ball through the hole into left field, scoring Kyle Wise, who had stolen third base.
Deer Valley (8-16, 2-8 BVAL) responded quickly in the same inning. After three straight walks to open the inning, Ryan DeStefano reached on an error, allowing Jose Dominguez to score from third and tie the game at one.
The Falcons entered the seventh inning leading 5-3, and with two outs, it looked like things would stay that way going into the bottom half. But Kevin Lonergan's two-out ground ball resulted in a pair of throwing errors, allowing Richie Kabasinskas to score what would be a much-needed insurance run.
After a rally cry by the Wolverines coach, Dan Tuck, Deer Valley mustered any strength it had left to build a comeback.
After Freedom relief pitcher Peyton Skaggs retired the first two batters, the Wolverines started their two-out rally. Justin Tamelier reached on an error, and then Nate Hermosillo singled to right, where an error in the field allowed Tamelier to score and Hermosillo to advance to third. With two strikes to his name and all the pressure on his shoulders, Jose Dominguez then singled to left, allowing Hermosillo to score and cut the lead to a single run.
Deer Valley needed just one more run to even out the game, but Skaggs induced a full-count fly ball to right from Evan Bittle, ending the game.
Freedom (14-10, 8-2 BVAL) came into the game needing Heritage to lose its game against Liberty to win the outright BVAL title and that's exactly what happened, as the Lions scored six times in the first two innings and went on to win 8-3. Freedom had beaten Liberty 2-0 on Tuesday to break what had been a three-way tie for the league lead.
“Since 2009 nobody thought we could do it, but here we are, we’re the champions and I’m very excited by it,” said Falcons coach Francisco Zelaya. “We didn’t play like we had pressure against us, we played comfortable."
Freedom will move on to the NCS playoffs, with the seedings announced this Sunday. The last time Freedom won a BVAL title, they followed it up with the program's only section title.
