Jun 1, 2015 4 min read

DUBOIS – On the nearly four-hour bus ride to DuBois’ Showers Field, California High School’s second-year baseball coach Nick Damico showed his team Ken Burns’ documentary, “The History of Baseball.”

“We tried to get their mindset right,” said Damico. “They were a little mad at me. They wanted to watch comedies. On the way home, maybe we’ll pop in a comedy. It was a good trip.”

The Trojans made it so by rolling to a 10-0, six-inning win over District 9 champion Oswayo Valley Monday in the opening round of the PIAA Class A playoffs.

And if California (20-2) continues to play as it did yesterday, perhaps it can make history.

The Trojans, the District 7 runner-up, overcame a slow start following the long bus ride on an overcast and chilly day to score two runs in the third inning, one in the fourth and four in the fifth to put the game out of reach against the Green Wave (20-3).

Starting pitcher Garitt Woodburn was a key component in seemingly every scoring outburst, hitting a pair of singles and getting hit by a pitch. Woodburn, batting out of the nine spot, scored three runs.

“He’s one of our captains. He came through,” Damico said of the senior right-hander. “He had a couple of singles up the middle. He sparked us, actually, in that third inning when he got the base hit.”

Woodburn did more than spark the Trojans. His two-out single in the top of the third was the first hit for California off Oswayo Valley’s Brandon Brabham, who struck out five of the first six batters he faced, including all three in the first inning.

“I had a good feeling,” said Green Wave head coach Brad Bucholz, whose team started four freshmen. “Our strength is our defense. We don’t have any 85 mph pitchers. We rely on quality strikes and playing defense.”

It would be that defense that would let the Green Wave down.

After Woodburn’s clean single up the middle, leadoff hitter Louden Conte hit a line drive to center that Grant West appeared to have a bead on. But the ball popped out of West’s glove and was then fumbled again while he was attempting to pick it up, allowing courtesy runner Drake Johnson to score from first and Conte to wind up at third.

Johnny DeFranco followed with a line-drive single to left-center to score Conte to make it 2-0.

That’s all the runs the Trojans would need.

While California was putting up nine hits off four different Oswayo Valley pitchers, Woodburn, Johnson and Alex Swartz combined to limit the Green Wave to just three hits.

Johnson and Swartz combined to pitch the final two innings after Woodburn was lifted after four innings with California ahead 7-0.

Damico had an eye on California’s quarterfinal game. The Trojans will play District 6 champion Juniata Valley, a 3-1 winner over Serra Catholic, on Thursday at a site and time to be determined.

“He threw four and we don’t play until Thursday, so he’s a possibility. We still haven’t decided who we’re going to pitch,” Damico said. “I’d like to see more consistency with him getting ahead in the counts and going deeper into the (state playoffs). When you’re 2-and-0 throwing fastballs, you might not get away with it. He was only ahead in the count three or four times all day, but he was able to get the outs.”

That was critical in the bottom of the third, when the Green Wave loaded the bases on a single and two walks, all of which came with two outs. But Woodburn got Oswayo’s No. 3 hitter, Dylan Bucholz, to ground out to shortstop to end the threat.

An RBI single in the fourth by Swartz and a four-run fifth, started by Woodburn’s lead-off single and highlighted by a two-run double by Aaron Previsky, put the Trojans into cruise control.

In addition to Woodburn’s strong day, the Trojans got three runs from Conte and two RBI from Nathaniel Luketich.

“I thought we were going to have a really good ballgame that first inning when he struck out the side, but I got in there and yelled at them a little bit,” Damico said. “It’s probably the first time I’ve yelled at them in two years and they really responded. The bats came out and they looked really hungry.

“I thought our defense played really clean except for the last inning, we had one little hiccup. It was a whole team effort, offensively and defensively.”