The Westmont baseball team is headed to the NAIA World Series for the second straight year.
The Warriors pounded 14 hits and got strong pitching from Chase Goddard and three relievers in beating Arizona’s Benedictine Mesa, 10-1, in the championship game of the NAIA Opening Round Tournament at Russ Carr Field on Thursday.
The 43rd victory in coach Tyler LaTorre’s first season sends the Warriors (43-8) to Lewiston, Idaho next week for the program’s final NAIA World Series. Westmont Athletics is moving to NCAA Division 2 next season.
“This has been our goal from the very beginning,” said senior shortstop Robbie Haw about returning to the World Series. “I think about what we went through in the beginning of the year. In the (coaching) transition, we didn’t lose anyone. No one gave up and quit when it was hard. We dealt with adversity the whole year.
“Our confidence as a team feels so high. I think winning the GSAC Tournament, which is something I have never done before and no one on the team has done, and beating a really good Hope (International) team a couple of times built our confidence up. Even when we were down that first game (of the Opening Round Tournament), we knew we could pull it off. There were no doubts.”
LaTorre said this Warriors continued to get “better and better and gelled further and further. You could see the belief coming into play and they started to believe that this is something that we could do. You could see it in the details at practice.
“When things weren’t going so well the first few games of the season, we talked about wanting to have a Lewiston practice or a Lewiston game. The season continued to build and the more it built, the more belief came – belief in each other and in what had come before in this program. To see what we did this week was truly special.”
Benedictine Mesa pitchers couldn’t keep the middle of the Westmont batting order off base. Bryce McFeely and Parker O’Neill, the Nos. 5 and 6 hitters, combined for eight hits and four RBIs. McFeely went 5 for 6 with two RBIs and two runs scored, while O’Neil went 3-5 and drove in two runs.
Brady Renck, Liam Critchett and Michael Soper each had two hits, as the Warriors pounded out 14 in the game. Critchett and Soper drove in two runs apiece.
Goodard allowed three hits and struck out five in 6.1 shutout innings. Zach Yates, Lucien Wechsberg and Sean Youngerman each threw an inning to finish the game.
Benedictine Mesa’s lone run came on a solo homer by Orlando Lorduy to lead off the ninth inning. The Redhawks had five hits in the game.
Westmont will join nine other opening round tournament winners at the World Series. The others teams to advance are William Carey (Miss.) MidAmerican Nazarene (Kan.), Cumberland (Ky.), Georgia Gwinnett, Southeastern (Fla.), Taylor (Ind.), Bellevue (Neb.), Indiana Wesleyan and host Lewis-Clark State.
The tournament bracket will be released soon. The World Series begins May 26 and runs through June 1.
Looking forward to the trip to the World Series, Haw said, “We have unfinished business in Lewiston. This team is special and I think we can build off last year. The experience we had was a good learning one for a lot of us. We have so many guys returning that it is not going to be overwhelming. It is going to be another business trip.”