Serra rallies, advances to CCS final

Slugging outfielder Aaron Maier put the Padres ahead, lacing a two-run single to left field to give Serra a 4-3 lead. Maier added an RBI single in the fifth. Through two CCS games he is 5 for 6 with three RBIs and four runs scored.

“Aaron has the ability to be one of the best players on the field,” Padres manager Mat Keplinger said. “He’s an extremely gifted athlete and he was great today.”

Maier likened Wednesday’s win to the first week of the season when Serra rallied to beat Los Gatos 6-1 in the “Battle for Atherton” tournament championship game. The Padres fell behind 1-0 in the second, but rallied back to tie it in the third before breaking through in extra innings with a five-run eighth.

“We fought in that game, and that kind of set our identity,” Maier said. “From the start of the season, we kind of had that identity of we’re always going to stay with it.”

The personality of Serra’s third matchup of the season with St. Francis was an entirely different beast, however. Things got weird from the outset of the game when Lancers leadoff hitter Landon King attempted to bunt for a hit. Serra starting pitcher Davis Minton fielded it cleanly and appeared to make the throw to first in time, but the throw was dropped at first base, allowing King to reach safely.

Two batters later, left-handed hitting junior slugger Tanner Wall drove a booming shot to left-center to bring home King with the first run of the game. Wall, however, got to third base and kept trucking home, allowing center fielder Tyler Harrison to get the ball back in to cutoff man William Walbridge, who rifled a throw to the plate for catcher Jack Armstrong to slap the tag down ahead of Wall’s head-first slide.

“We’re aggressive, that’s who we are,” Lancers manager Erik Wagle said. “We’re not a bang-bang team that hits a ton, so we try to score with our legs as much as we can. But, yeah, that particular play was not something I love to see with [cleanup hitter Gino Cappellazzo] coming up.”

Things got interesting in the moments after the out call at the plate. Wall hopped to his feet and went nose to nose with Armstrong, prompting home plate umpire Steve Leary to forcibly separate the two.

“That’s when I knew it was going to be a dog fight,” Maier said. “So, we went down early, kind of started out slow, but our team’s built to come back in those games. So, I just stuck with it and had some good ABs, and we were right back in the game.”

The Lancers made two outs on the base paths through the first two innings, but their aggression paid off in the third. With two outs, King got hit by a pitch and Jack Leeper followed with a bloop single to left. Despite the play being right in front of the Serra defense, King sprinted safely into third and drew a throw in the process, giving Leeper a window to move up to second.

The two extra takes of 90 feet paid off when Wall hit a slow chopper over the middle, as Serra second baseman Nate Hui mistimed his backhand and had the ball go through him and into center field, allowing both runners to score on the error.

“Honestly, I think I was just a little bit in my head at the start of the game,” Hui said. “I think that woke me up. I made that error, and I was just like: ‘All right, this is just a game.’ Of course, I’m going to make mistakes, but I just need to bounce back and be there for my team.”

Hui did that in more ways than one. He was the ninth batter due up in the bottom of the third inning, but would eventually get his turn. Jack Wessel got hit by a pitch to lead off the inning. Then, with two outs, six straight Padres reached base — Davis Minton on an infield error to bring home Wessel; Armstrong walked; Harrison singled home a run to make it 3-2; Aaron Minton walked; and Maier singled home two to put the Padres ahead.

Then Hui provided the dagger, drilling a two-run triple to stake the Padres to a 6-3 lead.

“Striking out first AB to a slider ... I know they’re going to come at me with another slider,” Hui said. “I think it just caught too much of the plate and I was just ready for it.”

St. Francis (20-10) got to Davis Minton for one more run in the fifth when Bobby Hill doubled, and Leeper drove him home with a single to left. But the senior right-hander soldiered through five innings of work to earn the win.

“What you can expect from him is being competitive and staying in the moment, and being able to pitch through some adversity,” Keplinger said.

Serra got the run back in the bottom of the fifth. Harrison reached on an infield throwing error and later scored on Maier’s RBI single to center.

Then Hui emerged in relief to close it out. The junior right-hander ran into a two-out hiccup in the seventh, when Hill reached on an infield single and King followed with a sharp single to right to bring the potential tying run to the plate.

“It kind of perked it back up, for sure,” Wagle said. “We were trying to get the tying run to the plate, obviously, in that situation. We knew we had Jack, Tanner and Gino coming up, so pretty exciting stuff.”

Hui recovered, though, and finished it out with a soft liner to second base, earning his sixth save of the year.

Serra now advances to the CCS finals for the first time since 2017. The Padres are 6-6 all-time in CCS championship games, with their last title coming in 2009 in the Division I tournament.

The Padres will face No. 2 Valley Christian Saturday at Excite Park.