Alpine Little League All-Stars claim Section 3 championship; advance to Nor Cal tournament

Three different Alpine players homered in the contest, giving the team four home runs through three games in the section tournament, and 13 homers through their 7-0 run en route to the District 52 and Section 3 titles.

“All the power, it’s just shocking,” Alpine manager Dave Levinson said. “I can’t believe how much power these kids have. I can’t believe it!”

Nolan Levinson and Charles Saste each homered in the first inning, but the backbreaker came in the second off the bat of Kogan Flannery. The left-handed hitter had never homered in his life prior to the current All-Star run, but connected for his third home run of the summer when he lifted a high fly ball down the right-field line that got help from the Middlefield crosswind and cleared the wall by three feet for a grand slam.

“I didn’t think that was going, to be honest,” Dave Levinson said. “But he’s been hitting it so well in practice.

Nolan Levinson then delivered the starting pitching gem for which he’s been champing at the bit through the entire tournament. The big right-hander started all three games in the tourney, but exited early in Saturday’s 11-0 win over Newark and again in Sunday’s 5-3 semifinal win over Bollinger Canyon to keep his pitch count low.

“When we look at the Little League World Series in years past, the regional box scores and stuff, the teams that win it, you’re aggressive,” Dave Levinson said. “You can’t be afraid of losing a game and keeping your starter in. So, we pulled him (Sunday) at 35 (pitches) to have him for this game, knowing their ... two guys who have pitched the most weren’t available. Once we had him, and we knew they didn’t have their guys, we were going for the jugular.”

In his third straight start, Nolan Levinson maxed out his pitch count to fire 5 1/3 innings, allowing three runs on six hits and one hit batsman, while striking out eight.

“I was expecting it because we were planning this the whole tournament,” Nolan Levinson said. “We were planning to save me for the final because we thought we had a pretty good chance of making it there. And it worked out. I went pretty far into the game.”

He had to overcome some early jitters, however.

Bollinger Canyon was gifted a run in the first. With Bennett Humphries on second and two out, cleanup batter Ethan Lee grounded a single into the 5.5 hole, with Humphries stopping at third; but an errant throw that short-hopped the cutoff man went all the way to the backstop, allowing Humphries to dash home to give Bollinger Canyon a 1-0 lead.

Alpine responded with a big-time power flex. Nolan Levinson led off the inning connecting with a hanging curveball for a mammoth line-drive shot that cleared the wall in left-center by at least 50 feet to tie it 1-all.

“Nolan, they’ve been throwing him so much off-speed, and then they tried to sneak it by,” Dave Levinson said. “He knew what was coming, and he sat on it and found it.”

Then, after back-to-back singles by Patrick Breslin and Flannery, the cleanup batter Saste sent a towering drive to deep center that carried over the wall for a three-run homer to give Alpine a 4-1 lead.

“Charles, I’m so proud of him because he has been struggling with them mixing it up on him a lot,” Dave Levinson said. “And then they threw him a curveball and he blasted it.”

In the second, Bollinger Canyon closed to within a run with a power show of its own. Amaury Solomon got hit by a pitch to start the inning. Then Bradley Gunion delivered a two-run blast with a towering shot to center and a wind sprint around the bases to make it 4-3.

But Alpine wasn’t done swinging for the fences. Alpine has prided itself on offense from the bottom of the batting order throughout the section tournament, and the trend continued in the bottom of the second. Garrett Weiss reached on an infield single and Simeon Ouellette-Massiou followed by punctuating a six-pitch at-bat with a line-drive single to left. No. 12 batter Jack Chambers then cashed in with an RBI single to left.

“They’ve put the work in,” Dave Levinson said. “So, it’s no accident for those three. ... I can’t imagine any 12-year-olds working harder than they have in the last couple years on their hitting, and it shows. And I’m so proud of them.”

Then after Nolan Levinson reached on a bloop single to load them up, Flannery greeted the Bollinger Canyon bullpen by going grand salami to clear the bases.

The left side of Alpine’s infield had a rough night, committing three errors. But the second baseman Weiss atoned for his teammates’ miscues with one stellar play in the third to prevent Bollinger’s Canyon’s burgeoning rally from gathering steam. Humphries set the table with a one-out single but, when Bryce Dinis followed with a smash one-hop chopper off the hard Middlefield infield that seemed ticketed to right field, Weiss ranged left and watched it high into his glove as he chased it down, planted to pivot 180 degrees, and fired to second to gun down the lead runner.

With one out in the sixth, Alpine turned to reliever Derek Armstrong to close it out. The right-hander ran into trouble when Muir reached on an infield error, and Lee got hit by a pitch. After Muir scored on a wild pitch, Armstrong settled down, notching back-to-back punch-outs, coaxing a check swing third strike that was called on appeal to end it, setting off an Alpine celebration in the middle of the infield.

“We’re feeling great,” Weiss said. “First time we’ve done it in a long time. And a lot of hard work. So, it feels great to win the championship.”

With the win, Alpine advances to the Northern California Little League tournament, opening Saturday at Lucchesi Park in Petaluma at 4 p.m. The seven-team, double-elimination tournament spans through next week, with the championship round starting Thursday, July 24.