Castaic High School Coyotes baseball is in a league of its own after Tuesday’s 27-0 win over the Sun Valley Magnet Pioneers (17-7).
Ten Coyotes batted 1.000, four Castaic arms combined for a five-inning perfect game while the team put up a new program record in runs in its SoCal Division 5 regional opener.
The Coyotes (25-7-1) hammered the Pioneers from the get-go with nine first-inning runs but brought down the house with 16 more scores in the second.
Castaic Darrell Davis had each of his starters pulled in the second inning, but the Coyotes’ bench kept hammering the ball.
“I’m proud of them,” Davis said. “If we hit, there’s not many teams that can hang with us.”
Coyotes first baseman Tyler Hawn sparked the second inning with a leadoff home run. Hawn’s blast to left field marked him as the first of 17 straight Castaic batters to reach base.
“For us younger classmen, the boys are gone from school and now we’re not seeing them anymore except when coming out here playing with them,” Hawn said. “These last couple of games are going to be special for us because it’s my last couple moments to get this done with my brothers before they’re all off, so I think that definitely helped.”
Hawn totaled 5 RBI on the day and went 3-for-3 alongside second baseman David Cailatto. The second baseman was not too surprised to see his bench match the starters’ hitting capabilities.
“We all come out here and we all work hard so it’s not really much of a surprise,” Cailatto said. “We do what we do because we all work for it.”
The Coyotes tore through four different Pioneer pitchers with big hits coming from Stephan Souza, Brayden Lester, Luke Thompson and Jacob De La Cruz.
Lester, who doesn’t typically hit, nearly joined Hawn in the home run party after blasting another deep shot to left that hit the wall.
On the mound, Kyler Freude started the perfect game before Lester, Nathan Berru and Tyler Collins each added a perfect inning. Lester was also one foul ball off of an immaculate inning.
“We have just so many young arms,” Hawn said. “For Nate and Collins to both come up and pitch the way they did, and just strike those guys out, that was pretty cool to see. That’s two JV guys coming up in a regional game. It’s the big game coming in handling it like that even though the game was out of hand, but the way they handled it, that was impressive.”
Castaic now moves on to the SoCal Regional semifinals, where the team will host the Fillmore Flashes (18-14) on Thursday.
Fillmore is the Division 7 CIF runner-up but is shooting for a rematch with the Ganesha Giants, the team that bested the Flashes in the title game and will possibly await the winner for the Regional championship.
The pennant still runs through Castaic with the Coyotes feeling better than ever with all their playoff success.
“We don’t want it to end anytime soon,” Hawn said. “We want to win another championship. That feeling of celebrating, we want to have one more of those. We’re having a lot of fun now. This has been the best this team has ever been. And I’m glad that’s happening right now in the games that mean the most.”
Castaic’s 14 seniors will also graduate Thursday night so the team has a shot at quite the eventful day.
“Kids are getting ready to graduate here so I told them that we’ve got two more games to get,” Davis said. “I think we’d be the first team in Santa Clarita ever to win a state regional championship. So that’s our goal. And we’re one step closer to that goal.”
The Coyotes host Fillmore in the SoCal Division 5 Regional semifinals on Thursday at 1 p.m.
“We’re looking forward to hopefully getting to the championship and to get to hold that trophy,” Cailatto said.
