Burlingame senior Drew Gall take a swing in an April 24 win at Sequoia. The Panthers open the Central Coast Section playoffs Saturday as the Peninsula Athletic League’s highest seeded team.
Burlingame senior Liam Philibosian was lacing line drives down the right-field line Wednesday during the Panthers’ baseball batting practice at Capuchino High School.
Shawn Scott
The senior has scuffled at the plate mightily for Burlingame this season, batting under the Mendoza line, though he did have a key run of seven straight games with at least one RBI starting in late March, as the Panthers were opening Peninsula Athletic League Bay Division play.
As Philibosian’s loud round of batting practice was winding down Wednesday, he shouted toward manager Shawn Scott, insisting he earned one more round of BP later in the day. Philibosian sounded more like he was telling Scott, but he was in essence asking, and the Panthers’ 16th-year coach resoundingly gave the left-handed hitting senior his blessing.
Philibosian is indicative of the entire Burlingame lineup in 2026, a team that didn’t seem to have any offensive thump through the first half of the year. With the regular season ending last week, the Panthers settled for .272 team average. But that average spiked as the season wore on, with Burlingame batting .305 in league games en route to capturing the PAL Bay Division championship.
“I knew we would eventually hit once we got our feet underneath us, and we understood the type of pitching and defense we had,” Scott said. “I knew we would hit and obviously we ended up hitting. ... It was just a matter of if they’d be timely hits, and we’ve had them.”
Burlingame is now set to open the Central Coast Section playoffs as the PAL’s highest seeded team. The Panthers drew the No. 3 seed in Division II, and will play host to No. 6 Leigh-San Jose in Saturday’s postseason opener, at Capuchino, at 1 p.m.
It’s quite a turnaround for a program that didn’t qualify for the CCS playoffs in 2025, suffering the doldrums of offensive woes that even this season’s start couldn’t touch. Burlingame hit just .220 as a team last season.
Burlingame’s coaching staff thought Scott might announce his retirement after the 2025 season. Instead, the South San Francisco native — who played for first generation of El Camino’s 1980s teams under longtime manager Carlos Roman — announced he was staying on at Burlingame for one more season, and made a bold prediction at that.
“We all thought that was it, and he said: ‘There’s no way I’m going out a loser.’” Burlingame coach Vince Lopiccolo said. “And then this season, he put it right out on Front Street: ‘We’re going to go out and win a league title.’”
Burlingame led the PAL Bay standings for the second half of the league schedule, but an extra-inning loss May 8 to Carlmont dropped the Panthers into a first-place tie with Menlo-Atherton. Scott’s team was still looking at a league title, but were relegated to sharing it with M-A — that is, until M-A dropped its penultimate game of the regular season, a 10-0 upset at the hands of Hillsdale, thanks largely to a magnificent pitching performance by Hillsdale senior Hugo Guzman, who just happens to be the cousin of Burlingame catcher Oscar Osuna Lopez.
Thanks to the upset, Scott — who announced his retirement at the start of the season, with 2026 being his last — rode into the sunset with his Panthers claiming the outright Bay Division crown.
Good, old-fashioned fundamentals of pitching and defense proved the 2026 Panthers’ calling card. Burlingame went 8-1 in one-run games this season.
“We took our lumps last year but all those games we lost, the tight ones, we won ’em this year,” Lopiccolo said.
Still, Scott and his dream team coaching staff of Lopiccolo, Marty Cole, Rick Lavezzo and Jesse Lehane set out on unlocking the hit tool that had laid dormant for the first half of the season.
“We put together a competition, a BP competition, whether in the cage or in the field,” Scott said. “And we made it as fun as possible without them knowing they were really competing; but then they figured out they were competing. And they wanted it more than we did. So, we left it in and it’s something we do every BP.
“Just putting them in competition mode, making them see pitches and understand what they can do with that pitch,” Scott said. “And ever since then it’s been fabulous.”
All CCS openers scheduled for Saturday.
Division I
No. 8 Serra (17-9) at No. 1 St. Francis (24-3), 3 p.m.
Division II
No. 6 Leigh (17-10) vs. No. 3 Burlingame (18-9) at Capuchino, 1 p.m.
No. 8 Menlo-Atherton (14-13) at No. 1 Carmel (21-6), 1 p.m.
Division III
No. 7 Carlmont (13-14) at No. 2 Hollister (17-10), noon
No. 8 Christopher (13-12) at No. 1 Menlo (17-10), 1 p.m.
Division IV
No. 8 Sequoia 8 (15-12) at No. 1 Harbor (17-10), 1 p.m.
Division V
No. 7 Homestead (12-16) at No. 2 Half Moon Bay (17-9), 1 p.m.
No. 8 Salinas (10-18) at No. 1 San Mateo (19-8), 3 p.m.
Division VI
No. 7 El Camino (21-5) at No. 2 Lincoln-San Jose (18-7), noon
No. 8 Design Tech (13-7-1) at No. 1 Gunn (16-11), 10 a.m.
All CCS openers scheduled for Saturday.
Division I
No. 8 Aragon (17-10) at No. 1 San Mateo (17-5), 11 a.m.
No. 5 Wilcox (17-7) at No. 4 Hillsdale (17-9), 1 p.m.
Division II
No. 6 Burlingame (16-8) vs. No. 3 Mercy (21-4) at Cuernavaca Park, 1 p.m.
No. 5 Menlo-Atherton (19-4) at No. 4 Soquel (18-7), noon
No. 8 Woodside (15-9) vs. No. 1 Carmel (22-6) at Carmel Middle School, 1 p.m.
Division III
No. 7 Santa Teresa (11-12-2) at No. 2 Capuchino (11-13), 6 p.m.
No. 4 Leigh (15-9) at No. 5 Mills (13-11), noon
Division IV
No. 8 Watsonville (3-17-1) at No. 1 Notre Dame-Belmont (13-11-1), 4 p.m.
Division V
No. 6 Design Tech (12-5) at No. 3 North Monterey County (18-8), 1 p.m.
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Dirk van Ulden said:
Karenlyons said:
This was actually a no-hitter.
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