KELSEYVILLE >> The longest active league winning streak among Lake County’s high school sports teams lives on after the Kelseyville Knights beat the Cloverdale Eagles 12-8 on Monday afternoon at Lloyd Larson Field.
That’s what a nine-run inning will do for you. The Knights (3-0 league, 5-5 overall) sent 15 batters to the plate in the bottom of the second, erasing a 3-2 deficit and opening up an 11-3 lead that never felt safe to Kelseyville head coach Lou Poloni.
“I’ve never had that big of a lead where I was so worried,” Poloni said. “They (Eagles) can swing it.”
Poloni said he even called for a sacrifice bunt in the bottom of the third inning while trying to scratch out another run against a hard-hitting Cloverdale team that had a 2-0 lead just two batters into the game on freshman Collin Patterson’s home to left field.
“That’s something I would normally never do, but it (the lead) just never felt safe to me,” Poloni said of calling for the bunt with an eight-run lead.
Kelseyville got those two runs back in the bottom of the first only to watch the Eagles go up 3-2 in the top of the second. The Knights wasted little time answering.
“They scored, we scored,” Poloni said of the first, second and fourth innings. “I like that.”
Cloverdale scored twice in the fourth and three times in the seventh before Randy Pfann, the third Kelseyville pitcher of the day, retired the only two batters he faced to save the win for starting pitcher Jason Gentle, who didn’t have much success throwing his fastball past the Eagles hitters.
“He had his curve ball going today and it’s a good thing,” Poloni said. “He definitely didn’t have his best stuff, but he battled.”
Gentle left the game after five innings with a 12-5 lead. He allowed eight hits, four earned runs, struck out one and walked four.
Tyler Linnell pitched a scoreless sixth before running into trouble in the seventh.
The Knights finished with 11 hits, four of them by Gentle, who went 4-for-4 with a double and two RBIs. Kyle Ashworth (2-for-5) knocked in two runs as did Jacob Beck (1-for-3) and Junior Gonzales (1-for-3).
Despite the Eagles’ best efforts, Kelseyville lengthened its league winning streak to 31 games, which dates back to 2016. The Knights began the day tied with both Cloverdale (2-1, 4-3) and Fort Bragg for the league lead. Kelseyville and Fort Bragg (2-0) are the only undefeated teams remaining.
Game notes: Eight different Knights collected at least one RBI during the nine-run second inning … The Cloverdale game was rescheduled for Monday after the two teams were rained out on Friday … Both teams played pretty good defense, committing two errors apiece, or the game would have featured even more scoring … Linnell allowed only one hit in his 1 1/3 innings on the mound, but he also walked one and hit three … Gentle, Nate Phillips and Cooper Goff all had doubles in the win … The Knights are on the road Tuesday against Willits (2-1), weather permitting, and they stay on the road Friday to play Clear Lake (0-3).
In other spring sports action Monday:
Kelseyville 10, Willits 1
At Willits, with the threat of more rain in the forecast, the Kelseyville Knights and Willits Wolverines pushed up a scheduled Tuesday game in Willits to Monday and the Knights prevailed behind Allison Bryant’s three-hitter and a Cassandra Villalobos three-run home run.
Kelseyville (3-0, 6-1) entered the week tied with Cloverdale and Middletown, both 2-0, atop the league standings. The Knights return to action Friday in Lakeport against Clear Lake.
Bryant recorded a season-high 12 strikeouts and the only run she allowed was unearned.
“She changes speeds, locates her pitches,” Kelseyville coach Phil Psalmonds said. “She’s not overpowering, but she’s tough to time. Nobody squares it up against her.”
Kelseyville had a 6-1 lead going to the top of the fifth inning when Villalobos, a right-handed batter, hit an opposite-field shot down the right-field line.
Kaleigh Nunn went 2-for-3 with two RBIs for Kelseyville and Bib Hamner went 2-for-3 with a RBI and scored three times.
Both teams committed six errors.
“We’ve got to definitely clean it up,” Psalmonds said. “We were throwing the ball around the yard. We can’t do that against Cloverdale.”
