Two strong prep baseball programs, nearly derailed by injuries to their respective stars, took to a familiar ballpark on Tuesday night with a chance to not only earn their place in history, but square off against each other for all the marbles. It seemed tailor-made, almost a little too well.<\/p>\n
And in the end, it was.<\/p>\n
In a doubleheader at Blair Field, both Wilson and Lakewood lost in the semifinals of the CIF Southern Section-Ford Championships, presented by Farmers, missing a chance for an all-Moore League championship final this weekend. Wilson dropped their game to Esperanza by a score of 6-2, while J.W. North defeated a heavily-favored Lakewood squad by a 10-4 score in the afternoon game.<\/p>\n
Wilson ends their 2011 season at 26-7, while Lakewood finishes with a 29-5-1 overall record and the Moore League title.<\/p>\n
In the 4:00pm matchup, J.W. North jumped out to a 5-0 lead in just the first inning as Lakewood struggled to mount a comeback. There was no shortage of bad blood in this one, as the two squads met earlier this season and Lakewood star catcher Tyler Schultz was injured in a collision at the plate that many believed would end his time as a Lancer. Schultz played his first game since that injury last night \u2013 in the outfield \u2013 but the San Francisco signee and his Lancer teammates fell short against the Huskies.<\/p>\n
At 7:00pm, Wilson actually led Esperanza early with a 2-1 score in the top of the 4th inning, but the bottom brought trouble. Esperanza scored four in an outburst to take a commanding 5-2 lead, and added one more run for good measure in the 6th.<\/p>\n
Wilson lost a star of their own, starting pitcher Sean Buckle, to a broken neck after a freak accident in April. Buckle did not make it back onto the field on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
The fairy tale meeting was not to be, but that fact takes nothing away from the remarkable runs that both teams enjoyed in 2011.<\/p>\n
Esperanza (23-10) will play J.W. North (26-7) at Dodger Stadium this Friday for the Division 1 CIF championship game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With a chance to face each other at Dodger Stadium for the C.I.F. championship, Lakewood and Wilson first had to win their respective games on a familiar field. It wasn’t to be, however.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=724"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}