2014 WK 3 SFS 1

SANTA FE SPRINGS I

HITMEN WIN IN THEIR FIRST ALLIANCE TOURNAMENT

The third Alliance tournament was held the weekend of April 26-27 at Little Lake Park in Santa Fe Springs. A massive rain storm had teams calling Friday to see if the games would be played. Of course this “storm” would only drop a .10” of rain in the area and move through within a couple of hours.

The park was in great shape and 8 teams were entered into the tournament. The newest participate in the Alliance were the Hitmen from Morango. The Hitmen completed the round robin portion of the tournament as the number one seed behind the pitching of Rob Schweyer and Ant Loza outscoring their opponents 29-2. Schweyer was the workhorse pitching 30 of the teams 35 innings, including all the games on Sunday to win their first tournament.

In the first game of single elimination they faced the Long Beach Wolfpack with Debby Day in the circle against Schweyer. The Hitmen came out on top 3-1 and moved to the semi-finals against Colton. Jesse Martinez got the call to face the Hitmen and held them to 3 runs as well but Colton was shutout for the Hitmen to advance to the finals.

In the finals they faced the number two seed Maccabi USA with Lumar Gross in the circle. The score was 0-0 going into the third, with both pitchers chalking up a lot of strikeouts. Jeremy Dean of Maccabi USA opened the inning with a double and scored on a Larry Silfen groundout to get the first run of the game. Maccabi USA held the one run lead into the bottom of the fourth. Hitmen captain Layvis Gabrial opened the inning with a single and scored on a home run by Henry Scheib for a 2-1 lead. The Hitmen added another one in the bottom of the sixth for a two run lead. In the top of the seventh Eli Salazar opened the inning with a double but Schweyer quickly regrouped and fanned the last three batters to end the game and take home the Hitmen’s first SCIFL Alliance championship. Schweyer allowed three hits and had 16 strikeouts in the championship game.

Maccabi USA entered the single elimination posting a 3-0 record and taking the number 2 seed. In their morning game they faced Balboa and won 15-0. In the semi-final game they were up against the Pala Braves and Sonny Perkins. In a tough game they came out on top with a 5-4 victory to advance to the finals.

The next tournament for the Alliance is May 17-18 at Little Lake Park again.