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Lakewood Long Beach Poly Millikan St. Anthony Wilson

Long Beach High School Baseball, Softball Off To Fast Start

Opening day for the spring high school sports season was this past Saturday, and several local teams were in action.

Baseball

Millikan baseball fans got a pair of thrillers as coach Ron Keester’s Rams won two games against Bellflower, both by a score of 4-3.

The Rams trailed 3-2 in both games before winning both via walkoff. The Buccaneers led 3-2 in the top of the 10th inning of the season opener, but CJ Baker hit a shot to score two and give the Rams a 4-3 win. Millikan got more heroics in the bottom of the seventh inning of the second game to improve to 2-0, tied for best in the Moore League.

Long Beach Poly finished fourth in the league last year but started 2-0 with a pair of wins over Buena Park at home on Saturday, winning 20-4 and 10-6. In the first game, Chris Murphy had two hits and four RBI and Nolan Brown had two hits to go with four runs. Brown also hit a three-run homerun in the second game.

In the second game Daniel Mariscal was 3/3 with a run and an RBI.

In other league action, Wilson split a pair of games with Banning, winning 2-0 and losing 3-2. Ryan Turner pitched a complete-game one-hitter to win the first one, with RBI by Greg Reasback and Jack Odell.

Alex Seguine had two RBI in the second game, going 3/4 at the plate. Ryan Pettway threw four scoreless innings in the loss.

Lakewood lost a pair of games to Los Alamitos, falling 5-2 and 3-1. Jordan started 1-2 while Compton lost 6-3 to Dominguez. St. Anthony picked up a 10-7 win over St. Margaret’s.

Softball

Adrian Ponce’s St. Anthony softball squad won the Division 6 CIF championship last year but started 2018 off 0-2 with losses to powerhouses Tesoro and Santa Margarita, further proof that Ponce wants to play schools in higher divisions to prepare his Saints.

In the Moore League Wilson is the only team above .500 after the first weekend of play as the Bruins beat Beckman and Fullerton on opening day at the Savanna High Showcase. Millikan split a pair of games and Poly fell to 0-1 in their opener.

Mike Guardabascio
An LBC native, Mike Guardabascio has been covering Long Beach sports professionally for 13 years, with his work published in dozens of Southern California magazines and newspapers. He's won numerous awards for his writing as well as the CIF Southern Section’s Champion For Character Award, and is the author of three books about Long Beach history.
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