Half Moon Bay wins CIF Northern California semifinal just hours before graduation

“I guess this morning, I wasn’t really thinking about graduation that much, just because this is a bigger deal to me,” HMB senior Ian Ehrhardt said.

With both HMB and West Valley holding their graduation ceremonies Thursday, the game was rescheduled for noon.

West Valley (23-6) has two graduating seniors on roster, and an assistant coach whose daughter was also graduating from the school located 234 miles north, just south of Redding. The Eagles travelled Wednesday and spent the night in Half Moon Bay. It’s the second straight year manager Willie Church’s team advanced to the Nor Cal semifinals on graduation day. Last year they played on the opposite side of the Division IV bracket of Menlo School, falling 6-0 to Santa Clara.

“We were in this same situation last year, and, thankfully, we had a home game,” Church said. “So, we got to play a home game in the same semifinals last year, and they were just able to walk from the baseball field to the graduation field, and be done with it. This time we have a little bit more travel.”

The Eagles, though, ran into a HMB squad firing on all cylinders. Manager Brian Anderson’s Cougars haven’t lost a game since April. Thursday marked their 14th straight win.

Prior to the winning streak, the Cougars were scuffling below the .500 mark with an 8-9 overall record.

“The beginning of the season was rough,” HMB junior Lane Giannini said. “We were not really winning, we were not really working as a team. And then started to get rolling more towards the end of the season, and then the winning streak started, and we just kept going from there.”

Two big moves shook up the Cougars’ clubhouse.

One was a restructuring of the starting lineup, moving the team’s best hitter, junior Riley Jackson, from the heart of the order to the leadoff spot. Jackson is now pacing the team with a .406 batting average, and has had Ehrhardt hitting behind him in the No. 2 spot since the lineup change. The speedy Ehrhardt is batting just .244, but is tied with Jackson for second on the team with 15 stolen bases, and leads the team by a country mile with 10 sacrifice bunts.

“Me bunting him over, that’s basically the reason I’m in the 2-spot,” Ehrhardt said.

The other big move was the addition to sophomore right-hander Paxton Holden to the starting rotation. Holden was already a mainstay in the starting lineup, and is currently tied for second on the team with a .333 average. He made his first start six games into the current winning streak, and has won all four of his starts since then.

Holden earned the win with an efficient 4 1/3 innings of work Thursday in the five-inning mercy-rule format, allowing three hits and a walk, while striking out three. He threw just 47 pitches, 31 for strikes.

“Unbelievable,” Anderson said. “Just to be able to locate his fastball like that right from the start, because we knew they were probably going to be aggressive with the bats, because they’re a really good hitting team. But where he was locating it, they just weren’t able to quite elevate it. So, they were hitting hard balls, but they were just hitting them right at us.”

The Cougars gave Holden all the runs he’d need in the second. The bottom of the lineup set the table with junior Alex Ryan drawing a leadoff walk, and Cole Giannini getting hit by a pitch. Then, Cole’s twin brother Lane Giannini singled home the first run of the day with a line drive to left.

Cole Giannini, batting 8th, finished the day 2 fo 2 with three RBIs and two runs scored, while Lane Giannini in the No. 9 spot was 1 for 1 with a walk, an RBI and a run scored.

“[The bottom of the order] has definitely been providing a lot,” Cole Giannini said. “It’s more of like a top of the order at the bottom right now. It was a big day for the bottom of the order.”

The Cougars sent nine batters to the plate in the inning, turning it over for Jackson to get hit by a pitch and Ehrhardt walked. HMB went on to score two runs via wild pitches in the inning before Holden knocked in a run with an RBI single to make it 5-0.

HMB scored two in the third and three more in the fourth. West Valley totaled three wild pitches on the day.

“It’s funny ... we’re very similar,” Church said. “We’re usually pretty clean defense, hit the ball well, and I think today we had just as many passed balls as we had all year.”

With the 10-run differential after four, Anderson gave Holden a chance to finish out the abbreviated complete game in the fifth.

“He was just freakin’ mowing ’em down,” said Lane Giannini, HMB’s center fielder. “Sitting out there in center, just kind of waiting for a ball. Kind of got a little lackadaisical. But, other than that, it’s just fun to be out here. When we’re winning like this, 14 in a row is pretty good.”

But after the sophomore issued a one-out walk, the Cougars turned to junior right-hander Tristan Castro to close it out. It marked Castro’s first pitching appearance since May 9, when he won his second straight outing to improve his record to 2-1 with a 0.95 ERA.

“So, he deserves innings, but just hasn’t because so many guys have been going CG,” Anderson said. “And we’ve been using Riley to close. So, that was really fun to get TC another shot, and even lower is ERA more.”

Castro faced two batters, notching a strikeout and a game-ending groundout to third baseman Cole Colucci.

Despite HMB playing for a Nor Cal championship Saturday, the team was not issued a curfew for grad night, Anderson said.

“I’m sure they’re really looking forward to having fun tonight,” Anderson said. “But not even that. Just being with their families and then that grad night thing tonight. ... I’ve trusted these boys all year long, I’m going to trust them to do their thing. And there’s no school [Friday] anyway. So, they can sleep in as long as they want after that thing happens, and we can practice as late as we want with the daylight kind of stuff. So, they can have as much fun as they want.”

HMB is now set to host No. 2 Livermore. Saturday’s first pitch is scheduled for 1 p.m.