Serra falls in heartbreaker

The 2025 Nor Cal baseball season finale and the 2022 regular-season gridiron thriller — when the current group of Serra upperclassmen were freshmen and sophomores — were eerily similar. The famed football showdown Sept. 2, 2022, at De La Salle, saw the Padres trailing by two scores in the fourth quarter, only to rally back with a pair of late touchdowns and a game-winning field goal on the game’s final play.

“That game was just like a program changer,” Serra senior Ian Josephson said. “I know some of the guys on the football team will tell you, that was kind of the final hump, beating those guys. ... So, for them to do that, it obviously set up the football program for success. And I think we’ve done that here. This group of seniors definitely changed the (baseball) culture, these last two years with [head coach Mat Keplinger]. I’m excited to see what the younger kids have in store.”

Saturday, just a stone’s throw from De La Salle football’s Owen Owens Field, the No. 1-seed Spartans (29-4) regained their dominance in Northern California before an overflowing standing-room-only full house at Koch Baseball Diamond, rallying from two scores down in the bottom of the seventh, before winning it in walk-off fashion on the game’s final play.

Serra (28-7) was two outs away from victory with senior right-hander Davis Minton pitching his second inning of relief, when senior Ethan Sullivan sparked a rally with a one-out single. After tying it on back-to-back doubles by junior Tyler Spangler and senior Antonio Castro, the Spartans won it when speedy senior Niko Baumgartner hit a high chopper off home plate to the left side of the infield.

The ball bounded high over the head of third baseman Nate Hui, as Josephson at shortstop made a rangy backhand. The All-West Catholic Athletic League infielder gloved it cleanly and threw on the run to deliver a strike to first, but it was two steps too late to get Baumgartner, as Castro crossed home plate with the game-winning run.

“Once that ball was hit, I knew if Hui didn’t get to it, we probably didn’t have a chance,” Josephson said. “I went all out, made it as close as I could, and sometimes you just come up a little short.”

The sting could be felt around the visitor’s side of the baseball complex by anyone wearing blue and gold, a feeling that reared its head moments later as the two teams got into it during postgame handshakes, squaring off in a spirited shouting match, before the players were quickly separated by coaches and school officials.

For a Serra team with a strong depth of pitching, it was a tough spot for Minton to take the mound in the seventh. Hui has been the team’s closer all year, and would ordinarily pitch in that situation. But the Padres’ pitching staff underwent a sever realignment four days prior due to the Nor Cal opener going 12 innings. Minton was thrust into an unexpected relief appearance in the 2-1 extra-inning win over College Park-Pleasant Hill, firing five shutout frames to earn the win. As a result, Minton was forced to forego his Thursday turn in the rotation, and Hui stepped in to make his first varsity start, firing a complete-game shutout in the 3-0 semifinal victory over Los Gatos.

“This is an insane pitching staff, honestly,” Serra ace Riley Lim said. “You have every part you need. You have a closer ... we have two starters, actually. When their number gets called, they’re ready to go in.”

With Hui unavailable to pitch Saturday, Minton looked to close it out on three day’s rest.

“This is the only time of year you’re ever going to do that,” Keplinger said. “There’s been some circumstances of that. I’ve seen that in final four tournaments, and things like that, but only in high-leverage, postseason, like when championships are on the line.”

Minton entered in relief of Lim, who in his 14th start of the year overcame a rough first to work five innings, allowing two runs on three hits, all in the opening frame. The junior right-hander set down 12 of 13 batters at one point, and worked out of a bases-loaded jam in the fifth after hitting a batter and walking two. He struck out two on the day and induced six groundouts.

The top of De La Salle’s lineup gave Lim a rude awakening in the first. Sullivan led off with a double, Spangler socked an RBI double into the left-field corner and, after a single by Castro put runners at the corners, junior Brandon Vargas lifted a sacrifice fly to center to make it 2-0.

Lim didn’t allow another hit after that.

“I think coming out, we were trying to over-pitch a little bit in regards to using three pitches right out of the gates,” Keplinger said. “And it was actually the changeup that got him. But he made a really good pitch to Spangler, that hit the ball down the line. He’s a good player.”

Serra fired back against De La Salle starting pitcher Roman Bartosh in the third. Josephson sparked a rally with a two-out single to left. Senior Evan Bradshaw, who went 3 for 4 on the day, followed with a sharp single to right. Minton then cashed in with a two-run double to center to tie it 2-all.

In the fourth, senior Tyler Harrison reached on an infield error to lead off the inning. Sophomore Aaron Minton followed with a sacrifice bunt, and junior Aaron Maier made it count with a go-ahead RBI single to center. The Padres totaled five hits the second time through the batting order during innings three and four.

“It was mostly just seeing the ball up,” Maier said. “We knew this guy was a hittable guy, he threw a lot of offspeed. So, it was just staying on time with the fastball and seeing the ball up. That was the major change in our lineup the second time around.”

Maier then nearly made the defensive play of the year in the fifth.

With De La Salle fans standing along the left-field fence heckling Serra’s left fielder, mockingly calling him “Jordan” because of his uniform No. 23, Maier obliged by nearly slam dunking on a foul fly to left that landed in the bullpen. Maier went all out in pursuit of the ball, and got airborne to extend his glove as far as he could while crashing into the eight-feet high chainlink fence. Despite timing the ball perfectly, Maier just ran out of real estate while the impact jarred the glove from his hand.

“A couple of feet,” Maier said. “I seen the ball in the air, I was full speed to get it. Playing behind my brother Riley, I was going to do anything I could to make that play. I was a couple feet away from it.”

The defensive play of the day, as it were, was turned in by De La Salle’s Baumgartner in right field.

Serra rallied in the top of the seventh inning to add to its lead, but it could have been much more. Facing Spartans reliever Jack Sydlik, sophomore William Walbridge sparked the rally with a one-out single. Then, after Josephson got hit by a pitch, Bradshaw raked an RBI double to left to make it 4-2 and moving Josephson to third.

Davis Minton followed with a line drive to medium-deep right that looked like a surefire sacrifice fly, but Baumgartner uncorked a laser-beam one-hop throw to the plate to cut down Josephson — who has been playing through a hamstring injury for the past month — and deny the Padres an insurance run in the process.

“I thought I would be there,” Josephson said. “Obviously, a hurt hamstring holding me up a little bit, but there’s no excuses. I wanted to get there. If we could have pushed [the lead] to 3, that’s a way different inning and that dugout feels way different. Obviously, that’s a huge moment. But I was going there all the way, make them make a play, and they made a play down the stretch.”

Saturday marked the second time Serra and De La Salle have met on the baseball diamond this season. The two teams played April 16 in the Boras Baseball Classic in Sacramento, with the Spartans winning 5-2.

Unlike the football rivalry between the two schools in recent years, Keplinger downplayed the rivalry carrying over to the baseball diamond.

“I think we were just trying to play for each other,” Keplinger said. “We knew that they were a quality opponent. I mean, we saw them in the Boras, and [head coach David Jeans] does a heck of a job. Again, they’re as talented as anybody. So, we just knew it was going to be a dogfight.”

Serra finishes the year with some serious hardware, nonetheless. The Padres won the West Catholic Athletic League for the first time since 2021. They went on to capture the Central Coast Section Division I championship, the program’s first CCS crown since 2009. This season marked the first time Serra has qualified for the Nor Cal baseball tournament since it was instituted in 2022.

De La Salle has now won the CIF Division I title three times, including 2022 and ’23.