Killian’s Streak Continues Past Southridge For District Title

The Southridge Spartans were the last team to beat Killian at the beginning of April. Since that game, the Cougars have gone on to win eight games in a row and they avenged their loss to Southridge with a 5-1 victory to clinch the 8A District 16 championship.

“It was great to get all those wins against the very good teams we have beaten the last three weeks,” Killian head coach Angel Herrera said. “But I think this is a win we needed to get because they were the last team to beat us and it is like we have come full circle.”

Killian’s starter McLean Becton stepped up big for the second week in a row with another outstanding performance on the mound. After pitching a no-hitter into the sixth inning against Columbus in the GMAC championship game, Becton pitched a complete game and only allowed three hits and one run in the district championship.

“We just work so hard all off season and I’m just so happy,” Becton said. “I just went out there throwing strikes and do my best to get the win for all my teammates.”

The first few innings were dominated by pitching. Becton did not allow a runner on base until he walked a batter with two outs in the third inning. Southridge starter Osvaldo Garcia got off to a good start as well. He worked quickly and only faced six batters in the first two innings.

“Our bats struggled a little today,” Southridge head coach Ed Doskow said. “But hats off to their pitcher (Becton) as he had a great day and really made things difficult for us.”

However, the Killian hitters did the little things to manufacture a couple of runs in the third inning. Manny Careaga led things off with a single, and he was moved over on sacrifice bunt. After a walk, Daniel Andrade hit a ground ball to second base and beat out the throw to first to avoid the double play. The throw got away from the first baseman and Careaga came around to score and take the lead. Andrade then got to third base on an error from the pitcher trying to pick him off at first. Then on a three-two count with two outs Alex Fernandez knocked a hit to drive in Andrade and give the Cougars a 2-0 lead.

Southridge was able to hit back to back singles in the top half of the fourth. Christian Khwam and Steven Paredes were able to get quality at-bats against Becton and get solid hits. Khwam was able to score on a wild pitch to get the Spartans on the scoreboard. Becton settled down and struck out two and forced a shallow pop fly to get out of the inning with the lead.

The Cougars then became real aggressive on the bases in the bottom of the fourth inning to add two more runs. Killian stole four bases in the inning and added four singles from Spencer Levine, Mike Perez, Gil Polanco, and Daniel Andrade. Perez and Polanco drove in two runs to give Killian a comfortable 4-1 lead.

“We made a promise to ourselves that we weren’t going to have any regrets,” coach Herrera mentioned. “We weren’t going to wait for things to happen, but we were going to make things happen and go full force to execute our game plan.”

Careaga came up later in the sixth to get another lead off hit. Julio Berrios came in to pinch run for Careaga and scored when pinch hitter Alfredo Iser sent a hit to left center.

“Today was a real team effort at the plate,” coach Herrera said. “We had guys laying down bunts, guys getting big hits with two outs, and others coming off the bench with big hits.”

Becton walked out to the mound in the seventh as the fans cheered him on to complete the game. He struck out the first batter, but gave up a hit to the second man up. After a fielder’s choice on a ground ball to get the second out, Southridge’s Mike Rodriguez hit a hard line drive to right field, but Killian’s Spencer Levine made a diving catch to end the game, and the Killian players rushed the mound and piled on top of each other.

“It was crazy being on the bottom of that pile,” Becton said. “But its a great feeling and now we can look to our next goal, which is a regional championship.”

Killian has now won its second district title in the last three years. It will now wait to see what happens in the District 15-8A championship this afternoon to see who they will play next week in the first round of the regional playoffs.

“We are going to enjoy this win for a day and then get back to feeding our sheep,” coach Herrera said. “At this point anyone we play is going to be a very good team and a difficult task for us.”

Southridge will also advance to the regional playoffs next week, and will face the winner between Columbus and Southwest.

“We are going to stress playing more consistently and making the routine plays,” coach Doskow added. “”We played both those teams competitively this year and it should be a great game and you just never know come playoff time”

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