Long Beach City College baseball swept the Cerritos Falcons with a win in the third game of conference play on Wednesday April 13 with a score of 11-2.
The LBCC Vikings were confident going into their third game against the CC Falcons.
“We took both games before, so we felt good,” said Viking first baseman Zach Rivas.
The Falcons came out strong at the top of the first inning, loading the bases, but were prevented from scoring by Viking pitcher Julio Lopez when he struck out the third Falcon.
The Falcons continued to have bad luck when their catcher Andre Alvarez was injured by a tipped pitch delaying the game at the bottom of the first, but he was attended to and aided off the field with applause from the crowd.
Despite the interruption Viking pitcher Lopez was able to keep the Falcons from getting into the swing of things, allowing the rest of the Vikings to be offensively focused during their time at bat and for Chris Rubottom to steal home at the bottom of the second inning.
The Falcons continued to lose momentum in the third inning when they dropped the ball another two times, allowing Vikings Travis Aversa and David Balboa to make it home, while setting up Robert Barham to score another run off of a single.
The Viking’s own momentum was interrupted by the Falcons having a successful defensive fourth inning, which they capitalized on with a homerun from Falcon shortstop Trevor McInerney.
Entering the fifth inning the Vikings again found their offensive and defensive rhythm, hitting a series of singles and doubles that allowed Mark Stanford, David Balboa, and Zach Rivas to score while keeping the Falcons from making it home themselves.
This pattern was repeated in in the sixth inning when Zach Rivas hit a homerun, bringing two more teammates home.
Reflecting on this trend of forward momentum, Viking pitcher Garrett Rennie commented, “It only takes one play, one at bat, one pitch for the rest to get going,” Rennie said.
The Vikings held the lead throughout the rest of the game, while allowing the Falcons to get one last run on the board by their third baseman, Gregory Navarro III.
This completed their second conference sweep, and increased their overall wins to 22-12 and conference wins to 15-4.
Despite the excitement of another sweep, Viking pitcher Trevor Sutt took a moment to look ahead to the future.
“We gotta take the momentum going to compton in 2 weeks,”
The Viking’s next game is at Pierce College on Monday April 15, which is a rescheduled game from the Harbor tournament.