American Heritage Blanks Pompano For Seventh Consecutive District Title

Winning the district baseball title has become old hat at American Heritage. So when the Patriots blanked Pompano Beach 7-0 on Friday night in District 5A-16 for their seventh district championship in a row, there was little fanfare. No one got a Gatorade shower, and there was no pile at the mound.

Although happy to win the title, especially for the home-field advantage it provides, Patriots starter Alex Seibold, who pitching four innings of one-hit ball, was kind of ho-hum about the achievement.

“It’s kind of like the usual now,” Seibold said. “We’ve been winning it the past four years since I’ve been here. And this year coming in, I saw we had an easy district, so I was just taking advantage like it was any other game. There was a lot more pressure on me because all our pitchers are really good, so we have a competition. I gave up one hit. I’m kind of disappointed.”

It’s the first title for the Patriots under new coach Bruce Aven, who took over this year after Todd Fitz-Gerald moved over to Douglas.

“The kids have worked hard, and this is the first step to keep going,” Aven said. “You come out and you take every game serious and you play every game hard because you’re in a situation right now where you need to get momentum going for you, not against you.”

Seibold gave up that lone hit in the first to Shaw Pinnell, but thereafter, he was solid until the fourth when he allowed Pompano (11-10-1) to load the bases. A putout at first ended the threat. Domenick Mancini relieved Seibold in the fifth and pitched three solid innings, not allowing a hit and striking out five.

Heritage (20-4) put up two runs in the second as Brandon Vicens led off with a base hit and scored on Dallas Perez’s double. Perez scored on an error for the second run.

The Patriots tacked on two more in the third. David Villar’s bases-loaded walk plated pinch-runner Kevin Williams, and Esteban Puerta came home on a wild pitch after getting on with a single.

Danny Zardon doubled home Perez and scored on an error as part of a three-run fourth that also saw Brandon Lopez scoring on Vicens’ RBI single.

Seibold and Mancini combined to walk six, but Pompano failed to capitalize on those chances.

“We walked a lot of guys tonight, and that’s not like us, so if they would have got a key hit in the right situation, that score could have easily been 7-4 or 7-5 real quick,” Aven said. “In the same instance, what we’ve done is we had a couple of situations tonight that we needed to get hits or put balls in play, and we could have had more runs. So we left some guys on base and we need to capitalize on that. Maybe it doesn’t happen this game, but the next game, it’s going to hurt you. That’s just baseball.”

Pompano coach Ryan Combs said those missed opportunities came against a team the Tornadoes know very well.

“We know that we can play with them, and last time Anderson was on his game, but we can’t get one hit and win a baseball game,” Combs said. “We know when they’ve played together and when they’ve played against each other. There’s nothing we don’t know about them, and there’s nothing they don’t know about us. During the summers and during high school, they played against each other. There’s familiarity there. They pitched a good game tonight, but we kind of got ourselves into trouble a couple of times, making a couple of mistakes in the field, but our pitchers only gave up five hits. It was one hit to five hits, so it was just one of those things where we have a tendency to kind of beat ourselves and put ourselves in some spots, and to give a good team like that extra outs or extra baserunners, then you’re not going to beat them.”

Combs said his team is hoping to get another shot at Heritage in the regional semifinals May 8. That matchup would be played at Heritage.

For that to happen, the Tornadoes have to win at Jensen Beach on Wednesday, and the Patriots need to beat Suncoast the same day.

Seibold said the Patriots are playing good ball right now, and they’re ready for the next challenge.

“Our pitching’s been good, and our hitting, in the beginning of the year, we didn’t have the situational hitting, but now I think we’re coming around and playing as a team and we’re doing good on all cylinders.”

And although the Patriots are solid all-around, Aven wants the team to avoid complacency because that could hurt a team this time of year.

“It can happen to anybody. You have a good pitcher go out there and throw it and shut it down and he gets key hits at the right time, you can few hits but key hits and you win ballgames. That’s how it works. Whether it’s us or whether it’s them or whoever it may be. We go out there and do what we have to do and that’s it. We go out there and try and produce and do the best we can.”

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