Article Courtesy of the Mercury News
July 2015
Talk about resiliency!
The Cupertino National Little League’s junior division all-star team, just 10 players strong, provided a great example of that quality during the first week of District 44 tournament action.
Matched against two-time defending champion Los Altos, Cupertino National fell behind 22-0 in the first two innings and lost 31-1 in a June 26 tourney opener under the lights at Sunnyvale’s Fair Oaks Park.
Despite the humbling loss, though, Cupertino National’s 13-14 all-stars bounced back to win twice in the elimination bracket, knocking out Sunnyvale Southern and Tri-Cities from the eight-team, double-elimination tourney.
Nitin Subramanian’s seventh-inning single chased home Alex Logie with the decisive run in the 9-8 victory over Southern on June 30. Two days later Cupertino National ousted Tri-Cities 10-2 behind Tommy Lindstrom’s dominant pitching performance.
Coming out of the Fourth of July weekend, just four squads remained in contention for the District 44 flag. Santa Clara Homestead was 3-0, after blanking Los Altos in the winners’ bracket final on July 2. Los Altos entered this week at 2-1, as did Cupertino National and the merged team of Cupertino American and Moreland players.
Homestead advanced to the championship round, set for July 8-9 at Sunnyvale Southern’s Farrell Field, and awaited the elimination bracket survivor.
Against Southern, Cupertino National built an 8-4 by scoring in each of the first five innings. Southern rallied to tie in the last of the sixth on runs scored by Jordan Huang, Brian Kalcic, Sean Cheng, and Nikhil Venkat.
In the top of the seventh, Logie walked and stole two bases, before scoring on Subramanian’s tie-breaking hit. CN relief pitcher Manuj Mahajan was able to hold on to the lead, stranding Southern’s Nathan Say, who singled and was the potential tying runner, at third.
Arjun Ghuman and John Logie each singled twice for CN, while Huang, Kalcic and Jack Vazquez had two hits apiece to pace Southern. One of Kalcic’s hits was a triple and teammate William Lum added a double.
Southern, which started all-star play with a 7-4 loss to CA/Moreland and finished 0-2, received contributions from its other players, Cooper Berthiaume, Thomas Denome, Jovian Grengo, Jacob Nachshen, Gregory Robb and Zack Selna. The manager was Dave Kaefer with coaches Dave Del Vecchio and Fran Say.
After beating Southern, CN received a pitching gem from Lindstrom against Tri-Cities. Lindstrom had a perfect game until there were two outs in the fifth, when Lucas Widjaja singled to become the first base runner for T-C.
Lindstrom did not yield any more hits, but T-C broke up a 10-0 shutout by scoring twice in the bottom of the sixth. Lindstrom allowed just one hit over 6 2/3 innings and struck out seven batters. J. Logie went 2 for 4 and drove in two runs for Cupertino National.
Other CN team members included Henry Lassa, KelvinLee, Christian Garber and Ray Wang, manager Jack Faraday and coaches Mark Logie and Arthur Woolpert.
CN and CA/Moreland squared off July 6, and the winner was to meet Los Altos the next day.
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Tri-Cities finished 1-2 in the tourney, winning 10-7 over Mountain View, but falling to SC Homestead 9-3 and Cupertino National.
In addition to Widjaja, Tri-Cities players included Brayden Hersh, Lemuel Marucot, Justin Pang, Sahil Panwar, Casey Park, Hudson Park, Rich Sharma, Evan Shaw, Brandon Takaki, Joey Wilson and manager Eric Hersh.
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Major all-stars
Tri-Cities and Sunnyvale Metro, both 2-0 heading into the Fourth of July break, were among four teams that earned spots in the winners’ bracket semifinals on July 6.
T-C, which improved to 2-0 by blanking Santa Clara Briarwood 11-0, was to play Los Altos, while Metro reached a semifinal match-up with Santa Clara Westside by outslugging Campbell 10-7.
The survivors of those games advanced to the winners’ bracket final, a win away from the championship round, July 10-11 at Briarwood, while the losers slipped into the elimination bracket.
Cupertino National, Campbell, Briarwood and Homestead already had one loss and were facing elimination games on July 6. Cupertino National, which bounced back from an 11-0 whipping to Westside with a 12-8 triumph over Mountain View, was to battle Campbell, while Briarwood squared off with Homestead.
The Tri-Cities shutout over Briarwood was called after four innings. T-C scored five in the top of the third and six more in the fourth. Lukas Hoang and Dylan Phillips belted back-to-back home runs in the fourth.
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