Every Freeway and Sea View League team in the CIF-SS baseball playoffs advanced to the second round.
From the Freeway League, Sonora, Troy and Sunny Hills still are playing in Division 4. Sunny Hills had to win a wild-card round game to get to the first round.
From the Sea View League, San Clemente, Mission Viejo and Trabuco Hills are alive in Division 2.
Sunny Hills coach Arlie Kearney thought the Freeway League was as competitively balanced this season as it has been in a long time.
“We had some battles with Buena Park, three really tough games,” Kearney said. “Fullerton has Brent Bell, who is an excellent pitcher. Sonora puts two excellent guys on the mound. La Habra was very good and Troy’s lineup top to bottom was really good. Every single game we had to work hard to find a way to win.”
The Sea View League is part of the two-league, 10-school Coast View Conference. The South Coast League is considered the better of the two Coast View leagues, but sometimes there seems to be little difference in quality of the two.
“We all have our bad years and our good years,” Trabuco Hills coach Mike Burns said. “It’s cyclical.”
It’s been a good playoff cycle for the Freeway and Sea View leagues, so far.
Around the horn in Orange County baseball:
• Three of the four Academy League teams that made the playoffs are still going in Division 6: second-seeded Crean Lutheran, Oxford Academy and top-seeded Sage Hill.
• JSerra plays most of its home games at night. The Lions are home against Fountain Valley in a Division 1 second-round game today. JSerra needed Fountain Valley’s agreement to have that game be a night game, but Fountain Valley wanted to keep it an afternoon game so it remains an afternoon game.
• County teams that won wild-card round games and first-round games: Northwood and Sunny Hills.
• Most second-round games Tuesday are at on-campus fields at 3:15 p.m. Exceptions involving county teams: Huntington Beach vs. Long Beach Wilson, 3:30 p.m. at Blair Field in Long Beach. (The game will be the first half of a doubleheader at Blair that includes Arlington of Riverside vs. Long Beach Millikan); Beckman vs. Quartz Hill at Antelope Valley College; California of Whittier vs. Calvary Chapel at Vanguard University in Costa Mesa; and Sonora vs. Katella at Boysen Park in Anaheim.
• The remainder of the CIF-SS baseball schedule beyond the second round: quarterfinals, Friday; semifinals, June 2 (the Division 1 semifinals are played as a doubleheader at Blair Field); Division 1, 2, 3 and 4 finals June 6 at San Manuel Stadium in San Bernardino; and Division 5, 6 and 7 finals June 6 at UC Riverside.
• The Orange County All-Star Baseball Game is June 8 at La Palma Park’s Dee Fee Field in Anaheim. First pitch is 6:40 p.m. Rosters are at ocvarsity.com.
• Kevin Okuda pitched all 10 innings of Northwood’s 3-1 win over Mira Costa of Manhattan Beach in a Division 3 first-round game. He allowed seven hits and drove in the tying run in the sixth inning. Dylan Brine’s RBI single provided the winning run in the 10th.
• San Clemente catcher Lucas Herbert, a UCLA signee, drove in four runs in the Tritons’ 12-2 win over Bellflower in a Division 2 first-round game.
• As usual, there were plenty of one-sided games in the Division 7 first round. Seven of the 16 first-round games were decided by 10 or more runs. Division 7 had this football-like first-round score: Apple Valley Christian 30, Cornerstone Christian of Wildomar 14.
Contact the writer: sfryer@ocregister.com
