Orange Lutheran Tops South Hills, Advances To Championship Game

CARY, N.C.—The first semifinal of the National High School Invitational pitted two Southern California powers against each other in South Hills (West Covina, Calif.) and Orange (Calif.) Lutheran High—two teams less than 30 miles apart from one another in the Los Angeles area.

Orange Lutheran got the better of its neighbor, advancing to the NHSI final for the first time in its third trip following a 5-3 victory.

“It was wild. It was crazy. We knew it was going to be a dog fight,” Orange Lutheran coach Eric Borba said. “We’re just happy to be in the championship (Saturday).”

Orange Lutheran got on board in the top of the first after leadoff hitter Tristan Hanoian, a Texas Christian commit, singled and came around to score. South Hills quickly regained the lead with a three-run second inning in which shortstop Jacob Amaya, third baseman Jacob Dominguez and right fielder Carlos Camarena all scored.

“I’m sure it was a back-and-forth game that was fun to watch. Felt like we kind of dominated the game early,” South Hills coach Darren Murphy said. “They dominated it the last four . . . Against a good team you’ve got to put people away. To their credit, though, they came back and put together a great inning.”

That came in the fourth, after Lutheran failed to get a hit in the second or third innings, and put only one man on base thanks to a Hanoian walk.

“We had a team meeting right before that inning and I said, ‘You guys have two choices: You can pack it up, or you can fight and show something that we’ve never done before,’” Borba said. “And they did exactly that.”

Junior catcher Caleb Ricketts led off with a single.

“I just tried to go up there trying to be as unselfish as possible, focusing on every pitch. Not giving any pitches away,” Ricketts said.

First baseman Zach Busalacchi followed Ricketts with a double to right field, and Elijah Buries dropped a double into left field—just out of the reach of a diving Cole Francis.

Next came freshman pinch-hitter Max Rajcic. “I was just thinking, ‘Just drive the ball up the middle, just hit something hard, just score them.'”

Rajcic took one pitch for a strike before slamming a triple to right-center that broke the game open and put Lutheran ahead for good.

“They actually beat up on us a little bit a couple times,” Borba said of South Hills. “So we knew we had our work cut out for us. I think the biggest thing with our team today was the resiliency they showed. We went down in games in years in the past, we’ve tended to kind of fold after we’ve given up a lead and fallen behind.

“And today our guys just rallied together. That inning obviously was huge—led by the big hit from a freshman.”

On the mound, senior righthander Brenden Avventino, a UC Riverside commit, gave Lutheran 5.1 innings of shutout relief work, striking out two batters and walking none on 61 pitches.

“He did an unbelievable job,” Ricketts said. “I love the resilience he showed. Threw two pitches well: fastball, slider mix. It was an awesome job by him.”

Now, after their decisive response to South Hills, Lutheran is in the championship game.

“Shows how good we are,” the freshman, Rajcic, who could start the big game on Saturday, said. “We’re a great team. Our dugout was awesome, our pitching, our defense—our team was just awesome.”