Sacred Heart Prep pitcher Jack Halloran was charged with six runs through 3 1/3 innings in the CCS Division V championship game against Christopher-Gilroy Thursday night at Excite Ballpark in San Jose.
SAN JOSE — Sacred Heart Prep went from veritable paupers to princes in hierarchy the Peninsula Athletic League this season.
On the Central Coast Section Division V championship stage, however, the Gators’ sudden ascension came to an end with an 8-1 loss to Cinderella No. 8-seed Christopher-Gilroy Thursday night at Excite Ballpark, formerly known as San Jose Municipal Stadium.
No. 6 SHP (16-14) ran into a buzzsaw in Christopher starting pitcher Nick Valentine, who posted six zeroes on the scoreboard before the Gators manufactured their only run against the Cougars’ bullpen in the seventh. That run came off an RBI single by Luke Rennert, who hit a smash off the outstretched glove of Christopher first baseman William Anderson to push the run across.
“It was nice to show some fight at the end but it obviously didn’t turn out how we wanted,” Rennert said.
The Gators countered with senior right-hander Jack Halloran, who had a Jekyll-and-Hyde type of outing.
Christopher (11-13) got on the board with a thundering swing of the bat in the second, when William Anderson scorched a bases-loaded triple up the right-center gap to clear the bases to take a 3-0 lead.
The Cougars would rally for five more runs in the fourth to knock Halloran out of the game, but between the two crooked numbers, SHP’s senior right-hander flexed his ace stuff by recording the next six outs via strikeout.
“He didn’t have his A game,” Gators manager Sean McMillan said. “He was a little amped up for the situation, but he settled in there … and once he did, he pitched really well and kept us in the ballgame a little bit.”
Christopher went on a roll in the fourth, though, with seven consecutive batters reaching base. William Anderson supplied another big swing of the bat with a two-run double. He would eventually score on a wild pitch by the SHP bullpen, and Matthew Anderson later capped the rally with a two-run single.
At the plate, the Gators were retired in order just once all night, going 1-2-3 in the fifth inning. Otherwise, SHP had its chances against Christopher’s freshman right-hander, but went on to strand 10 baserunners throughout, including seven runners in scoring position.
“I thought we squared him up pretty well,” McMIllan said. “We had runners on base every inning, we just couldn’t get anything going offensively. He did a really good job keeping us off balance.”
Entering play Thursday, SHP was one of two PAL teams remaining in the CCS playoffs. Burlingame is still alive, as the Panthers will play for the Division III championship Friday night at Excite Ballpark against Monterey.
SHP seemed an unlikely team to outlast its PAL constituents, after finishing second place in the B-league Ocean Division. Only two teams below the Gators in the PAL hierarchy qualified for CCS, in Menlo School (third place, PAL Ocean) and Terra Nova (first place, PAL Lake). And SHP’s .552 overall winning percentage was the second lowest among the PAL’s CCS qualifiers; Menlo-Atherton (tied for third, PAL Bay) was the lowest at .429.
“We had a great matchup at the end of the year against Half Moon Bay, winner-take-all, for the (PAL Ocean Division) league title,” McMillan said. “So, it was a good preparation to be in a championship game like that. So going through the CCS playoffs, we felt like we’d been there before. … Winning two CCS games to get into the championship game … it feels like a great success for the program.”
The CCS championship game appearance was the third in program history for the Gators. They previously reached the CCS finals in 1989 and 2015, with the program’s only CCS baseball title in 2015 in the Division II tournament.
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