The Citrus College Owls lost to the Glendale College Vaqueros, 5-4, in their regular season finale at the Owls nest.
Glendale clinched the Western State Conference East title with the win.
“It’s a wonderful feeling,” Glendale coach Chris Cicuto said. “It’s great to see our players enjoy coming out on top after so much time they put into it, the coaching staff has put in thousands of hours over the course of our tenure together and to just have a championship rolling into the playoffs is something we can use the momentum going forward.”
The teams played each other in Glendale on April 24 and 26. Glendale won both games, 6-3 and 5-4.
The Owls’ biggest moment of the game was when sophomore Jesse Villalobos hit a two-run home run to tie the game at 2 in the bottom of the fourth inning.
The Owls took a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the sixth inning when sophomore Kristian Scott hit a single to bring in sophomore Donovyn Curiel.
The Vaqueros answered back fast in the top of the seventh when Lucas Sakay hit a game-tying double.
Glendale wasted no time and took the lead off a single from sophomore Jake Selco.
Glendale added insurance in the top of the eighth with a single from sophomore Tommy LaPorte to make the lead 5-3.
In the bottom of the eighth inning, Citrus’ Andre Flores hit a sacrifice fly to bring in freshman Teppei Fukuda to cut the Glendale lead to 5-4.
“We had a lot of opportunities,” Owls coach Steve Gomez said. “And I’m not sure that resilience would be right, we didn’t really bounce back when we needed to bounce back, but it’s been a long season, we finished two games above .500, we definitely did not meet the goals that we wanted and that was to finish in the top two in the conference and go to the playoffs.”
The game ended when Junior Chris Davidson struck out Curiel and Scott back to back. After he struck out Scott, Davidson threw his hat in the air as he was being swarmed by his teammates as he just won them the WSC East crown.
“It feels great to come in and finally get on my guys’ backs,” Davidson said. “And be able to help them out and get a win today.”
The Owls will now have to wait until Sunday to know their fate, the Owls would have to be in the top 18 of RPI in the California Community College Baseball poll to get in the playoffs, and even then they’d have to play an extra game to get into the top 16 teams.
