Bishop Diego High School’s “great season” – in which the Cardinals won the Frontier League championship and went 18-4 overall – came to an end at home on Thursday afternoon in a 9-2 CIF playoff loss against Windward.
The loss also snapped an 11-game winning streak for Bishop Diego, which was seeded third in the Division-6 tournament.
The visitors scored two runs in the first inning, three in the second, and two more in the third to jump out to an early 7-0 lead. Bishop’s starting pitcher J.D. Yonke – who entered the game an undefeated 7-0 – didn’t receive much support from his defense and was relieved by Aiden Williams in the bottom of the third.
The Cardinals made eight errors in the game.
“[J.D.] didn’t pitch poorly and he did what we asked him to do,” said Bishop assistant coach Kai Solin. “But the defense didn’t make many plays today.”
The Bishop offense couldn’t save the defense either. Although they had seven hits, only one of them went for extra bases – a double by Williams – and the Cardinals could only muster
one run in the fourth, and one in the sixth.
Windward starting pitcher Kirav Patel threw a complete game for the victory. The Wildcats offense also backed him with 10 hits.
“We don’t want to take any credit away from them,” Solin said. “But we didn’t do ourselves any favors.”
It’s a loss made tougher by the fact that this was the last competitive game for many of his seniors – something Solin himself went through as a player not too long ago. Despite
the loss however, the coaching staff remained extremely proud of the work his team put in throughout the entire season – reminding his players that in time, the joy from good memories will outweigh the bad ones.
“We had a great season, we just picked a bad day to have a bad day,” Solin added.
And after all, they will be the 2012 Frontier League Champions for the rest of their lives.
WINDWARD 9, BISHOP DIEGO 2
Windward 232 002 0 – 9 10 3
Bishop Diego 000 101 0 – 2 7 8
Patel and Brisacher; Yonke, Williams (3) and Salda; W – Patel (n/a) L – Yonke (7-1)
2B – BD: Williams
3B – WW: Levine
