The Lynbrook baseball team earned its first win over the season, defeating visiting Milpitas, 6-4, behind a great defensive effort over a hard-fought seven innings.
Down 4-2 heading into the bottom of the sixth, the host Vikings rallied. Junior Jared Jacoby led off the inning with a four-pitch walk. Juniors Vincent Yao and Maximo Brogley hit back-to-back doubles to tie the game at 4-4.
Following a sacrifice bunt by senior Ethan Wendler, junior Brian Malone doubled to deep center to give Lynbrook a 5-4 lead. A single by Tim Wallis and groundout from Eric Day scored Malone with the final run.
"I'd say that was a real team effort," Wallis said. "We had a lot of positive attitude this week like yesterday during practice just trying to stay relaxed and it really paid off."
The Trojans jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first inning through a triple by David Dietzman and a pair of singles by Brent Kuhne and Nicholas Woo against senior pitcher Christopher Ma.
However, the Vikings were able to come back in the bottom of the third with a trio of infield hits by Malone, Ma, and Wallis narrowing the deficit to 3-2. Though the Trojans threatened to score in the fifth inning after Roderick Jones and Able Martinez both reached base on errors, a crucial unassisted double play by Wallis killed the rally.
"We're excited to get our first win, it's been a tough one," Lynbrook coach Ken Wallis said. "It's a bit disappointing because I think our team is better than our record has indicated at this point.”
The Trojans rebounded with a 14-4 win to drop the Vikings to 1-14 overall, 1-7 in the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League El Camino Division. Milpitas ends the week at 7-8, 5-3.
“We were not hitting the ball hard on him at all so it was nice later in the game when we started getting more contact,” said Wallis. “[We] had to play a bit of small ball there at one point, bunt on these guys which we actually do pretty well because we have a lot of speed on our team and our pitching was really spot on today; Chris Ma gave us the first six [innings] and that was probably his best outing and Jared Jacoby came in there at the end at he was pretty much shutting them down.”
With the win, the team has gained a boost in morale to carry them throughout the rest of their season.
“It's a huge confidence booster, getting that first win because you can move on from there and work on the things you did not necessarily do well in that game and get better at the season goes on,” said Wendler.
"Just to know that you can win is always a great feeling," added Tim Wallis.
