Mark Carlisle

West Valley Preps

GOODYEAR — It was a somber end for Joy Christian baseball.

The No. 6 Eagles (21-8) were three outs away from a trip to the 2A championship game, but a four-run Phoenix Christian rally in the seventh gave the defending champion and No. 7 seed Phoenix Christian a 7-4 semifinal victory Friday on the practice fields at Goodyear Ballpark.

Joy Christian coach Kent Corley said it wasn’t losing the lead that affected his players emotionally, but rather that their hard-fought season had come to an end.

“They’re hurt,” Corley said. “They’ve been through all kinds of stuff this year. It’s been just a year of adversity, and they fought through it. We really wanted it for them, but we’re trying to get them to see how big an accomplishment this year has been for them.”

Joy Christian’s year was surrounded by disarray. As originally reported by AZCentral in late April, the number of families leaving the high school at the North Glendale K-12 campus caused Joy Christian to drop high school football.

While Corley's team was largely immune from the school's spring 2016 schism, that was not the case this time around.

Five varsity players transferred out of the school withing a month of the season starting. They included junior ace pitcher Zach Martinez and promising freshman Cayden Collins heading up the street to Mountain Ridge.

“The program’s been successful and done a lot of good things but never done anything like this as far as just the challenges that they faced and that they’ve overcome,” Corley said about the season. “And a lot of people on the outside don’t know that we’re any different from last year in the things that we’ve gone through, but everybody in the dugout knows what it’s been like. And it took a special group of kids to have that fight throughout the year rather than quit.”

Corley did not comment on the future of the program.

Phoenix Christian (25-5) will have a chance to repeat, advancing to the 2A state championship game against No. 4 Queen Creek San Tan Foothills (27-4, 6-2) at 7 p.m. Monday at Tempe Diablo Stadium.

Down 4-3 for most of the game, Phoenix Christian’s offense was flirting with a fourth run all night, stranding runners in scoring position in five of the first six innings. But, with their backs against the wall, the Cougar bats broke out like they hadn’t all day in the seventh.

Senior Steven Cochran led off the score-or-go-home inning with a triple that one-hopped to the wall in right-center. Senior pitcher Adrian Santa Cruz then helped out his own cause with an RBI single to right to tie the game at four.

After another runner reached on an error, senior Kyle Janes doubled to the wall in left to drive both runners home and give the Cougars a 6-4 lead. An infield single from sophomore Nate Gulick brought home another run to make it 7-4.

With an inning to regain their lead, Joy Christian could do nothing against Santa Cruz in the bottom of the seventh. A quick pitch snuck by sophomore three-hitter Ronan Kopp for a called third strike and the final out of game.

“I can’t say enough about Adrian,” Phoenix Christian coach Mark Band said. “…I will say this. He’s a senior. In four years, he’s never lost a state playoff game. And I’m glad, for him, it didn’t happen tonight. And the way he finished that last inning was just unbelievable.”

Santa Cruz retired the side in order on 10 pitches and struck out two in his dominant final frame to finish his complete-game victory. He struck out 10 in the game, and though he allowed four runs in the third, wit

Joy Christian's Ronan Kopp throws a pitch during a 2A semifinal game against Phoenix Christian on Friday, May 11, 2018 at Goodyear Ballpark Auxiliary Fields in Goodyear. [Jacob Stanek/West Valley Preps][/caption]h three errors in the inning, all were unearned.

The Eagles had four hits off Santa Cruz, and he walked four, though one was intentional, and hit a batter.

Phoenix Christian sophomore leadoff hitter Nathan Tarver had the offensive performance of the game, going 4 for 4 with one RBI and reaching base five times. However, he did not score a run, and was tagged out at the plate three times.

Kopp, who started on the mound for Joy Christian, struck out four and conceded six hits and five walks, allowing two earned runs and on unearned in 5 1/3 innings before being pulled due to pitch count in the sixth.

Senior Nick Ayres, who had been playing first, replaced him and got out of the sixth but ran into trouble in the seventh.

“That’s just a good hitting team. He ran up against some good hitters who put good swings on it,” Corley said about Phoenix Christian’s four-run seventh.

Ayres was replaced mid-way through the seventh, but all four runs were charged to him and he got the loss.

For most of the game, it seemed it would be Joy Christian pulling off the comeback.

After two innings, the Eagles had only one hit to show against the Cougars three runs and nine base runners. But Joy Christian broke out for four runs in the third despite having only one hit in the inning.

Four base runners reached, scratching across the first run on a catcher’s interference, two fielding errors and a walk. That loaded the bases for junior Mason Rhynard, who knocked a single to left, scoring two runners. The Eagles got one more on a sacrifice fly from freshman Josh Martinez.

The Cougars looked to have the tying run in the fourth, but an odd play negated the run. With the bases loaded and one out, Santa Cruz hit a potential double-play ball to the shortstop, who flipped it to the second baseman for the force, but he held on to the ball, not trying for the second out. The runner scored from third in the process.

However, the umpire ruled that the runner coming into second interfered with the second baseman, not allowing him to attempt the throw to first. Therefore, Santa Cruz was ruled out at first for the third out, and the run did not count because it was technically a force play.

“Well, he didn’t slide. You either got to slide or you got to peel off, and he didn’t do either. So, it was a legit call,” Band said about his team losing a run on the play. “… So, that was a killer. And you hate to end a season on a play like that, but fortunately we didn’t.”

Joy Christian's Daniel Pellish hits for a double during a 2A semifinal game against Phoenix Christian on Friday, May 11, 2018 at Goodyear Ballpark Auxiliary Fields in Goodyear. [Jacob Stanek/West Valley Preps][/caption]