SMN wins going away

Size does matter. Anyone who was in attendance for the championship game of the District 52 Majors Superbowl on Tuesday at Sea Cloud Park saw the half-dozen or so players on San Mateo National team who could've easily been mistaken for high school football players. Topping the list was San Mateo catcher Robby Ippolito, who at 6-foot-1 and 195 pounds was an intimidating presence to say the least. "And all these guys are (only) 12 years old," San Mateo coach Brian Green said after his team rolled to a 12-4 win over Alpine-West Menlo. "We are a very big team, but more importantly, these guys can play." Indeed, San Mateo rolled through the tournament, outscoring four opponents by a combined margin of 46-15. National trailed just once in the entire tournament, after Alpine-West Menlo scored two runs in the top of the first inning. However, San Mateo came back with nine runs in the bottom half to deliver an emphatic statement and essentially put things out of reach. "(After falling behind 2-0) I came to the kids and asked them, 'So, you want to get tested?'" Green said. "They responded in a big way. It was like whiplash because the hits were so good everyone's head were turning." San Mateo batted around in the first inning, sending 13 hitters to the plate. Leadoff hitter Cameron Taylor, who finished 4 for 4 with three runs scored, got things started with a double before scoring on Nick Balestrino's single. Marcus Alverez followed by crushing a home run to dead center field -- his third homer in the tournament -- giving San Mateo a 3-2 lead it would never relinquish. National was far from done, however, as it banged out four more hits in the inning, capped by an Ippolito RBI double to make it 9-2. San Mateo's swift and decisive outburst was plenty enough for starter Enzo Kalaveras, who tossed five solid innings before Brandon Cacci threw a perfect sixth to seal the outcome. The runaway victory capped a dominating run for San Mateo, which didn't even have to use its best pitcher, Ippolito, in any of the four games. "He didn't even throw an inning because we didn't need him to," Green said. "That's how dominant we were." In addition to Taylor's four hits, Balestrino, Ippolito and Ishman Ghuman had two hits apiece. Alpine-West Menlo proved to be a solid team, but it had no answers against a San Mateo juggernaut. In the postgame ceremony, Alpine-West Menlo coach Vasken Guiragossian started off his speech by commenting on the size of San Mateo's players and how they towered over his own group. "But you guys didn't just look the part, you played the part, too," Guiragossian told the San Mateo team. Daryl Goins had two of Alpine-West Menlo's eight hits, while teammate Andrew Carney had two RBIs. Both teams were playing their fourth game in as many days. The squads were selected just a couple of weeks ago, then went through five consecutive days of practice before jumping in right away to tournament action. San Mateo, which Green said last won the Majors Superbowl 11 years ago, proved to have a deep reservoir of talent that was too tough for anyone to handle. National led by as many as 10 runs after scoring once in the second and twice more in the third for a 12-2 advantage. "In this age group we were very deep," Green said. "I can't say enough about what the kids did today. We got behind, then came back and put them away. The kids were emotionally ready to play and they delivered in every part of the game."