Morgan Hill’s Pony A and B All-Stars were two of a kind in the
Los Gatos Sectional — the only teams that did not field any high
school players, as mandated by Morgan Hill Pony Baseball
LOS GATOS
Morgan Hill’s Pony A and B All-Stars were two of a kind in the Los Gatos Sectional — the only teams that did not field any high school players, as mandated by Morgan Hill Pony Baseball.
Against a Campbell team starting five players with high school experience Wednesday at Fisher Middle School, Morgan Hill’s seasoned A All-Stars looked out of their league during a 13-2 loss in elimination play.
Campbell ended the game by mercy rule with nine runs in the fifth inning, capitalizing on four Morgan Hill errors and a slew of passed balls.
“The floodgates just opened, and we helped,” Morgan Hill manager John Bennett said.
It was enough perhaps to encourage the A All-Stars to come back for a final Pony Baseball season to make amends, or to jump to high school ball right away.
“At the end of the day, the discussion was about preparing themselves for high school, how to together as a team and work together as a team,” Bennett said. “We wanted to get these kids to play aggressively against tough tournament teams.
“I thought we did a great job competing against kids who are going to be sophomores this year. They’ve had a year under their belt playing high school ball.”
It was the same case a year ago when many of these Morgan Hill All-Stars captured a third straight section championship together in Pony-13 only to buckle at Regionals against high school-level competition.
Campbell ended Morgan Hill’s run there as well.
“It’s much more competitive baseball than Pony. That’s the biggest thing,” Bennett said. “There’s an element of maturity and aggressiveness, which the a lot of kids don’t get until high school.
“You could tell who the high school players were.”
For the tournament, Justin Dziuba and Domenic Zanotto pitched exceptionally for Morgan Hill, with Dziuba striking out 12 in eight innings and Zanotto striking out seven in six. Zanotto also batted .400 and scored twice.
Garrison Grisedale had a batting average of .429 with two runs, and Zach Riveron batted .364 with a pair of runs as well.
