SAN JOSE — Chase Watkins plans to study business when he heads to Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo on a baseball scholarship in the fall. But the St. Francis High senior outfielder dipped into his science and history databanks when trying to sum up the Sharks’ disappointing 14-2 loss to The King’s Academy Knights in Saturday’s Central Coast Section Division III championship game.
“Sir Isaac Newton said it’s physically impossible to win when you make six errors,” Watkins joked. “You can quote me on that one.”
Watkins’ humorous poke at his team’s rough loss drew one of few smiles from the top-seeded Sharks (20-8) on a day marred by a half-dozen errors, including four in a 10-run, fourth-inning blitz from the No. 2-seeded Knights (23-6-1) that all but wrapped up the title.
The inning lasted a little more than 30 minutes.
It felt like a lifetime.
“There’s no real easy way to put it, I don’t think we’ve played that bad all year,” said St. Francis head coach Kenny Nakagawa. “I don’t know if it had something to do with graduation (earlier in the day), the stage — I don’t know what it was… We just unraveled.”
The toughest pill to swallow? T.K.A. pushed across eight of its 10 runs after the second out was recorded.
“That was a big turning point,” said St. Francis junior starting pitcher C.J. Gomez. “That’s tough to come back from.”
Gomez took the loss despite surrendering just one earned run on three hits in three innings. Juniors Andrew Seymour and Josiah Granados-Diaz split duties in the never-ending fourth, and senior Derric Estrada-Haro finished things off in the fifth.
T.K.A. tallied eight hits. St. Francis’ quartet of pitchers also dished nine walks and hit a pair of batters.
St. Francis had only four hits after exploding for 13 in an 11-1 win over No. 4 Palma High in the semifinal round just three nights before. They also beat No. 8 Pinewood, 9-4, in the quarterfinal round.
“We thought we peaked at the right time,” Nakagawa said. “I don’t know what happened between leaving school from graduation to coming here tonight. It’s just sad. You don’t want to see them end it that way. You don’t want to see them end their career like that.”
After more than half the team walked across the stage for graduation at the school’s campus in the morning, the Sharks had hoped to pair their diplomas with the program’s first-ever CCS title.
Through three innings, they had a shot.
T.K.A., the Peninsula Athletic League’s Ocean division champion, took a 2-0 lead in the second inning. Matt Johnson singled in Kaleb Chung for the game’s first run and Matt Wilson came around to score on a passed ball.
St. Francis, the co-runner-up in the Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League, tied it up in the bottom of the second on Granados-Diaz’s two-run single, which scored Gomez and senior second baseman David Talavera.
Then the errors started to pile up.
T.K.A. grabbed a 4-2 lead in the third with a pair of unearned runs on the same play. A wild pitch allowed Chris Boccignone to cross home plate and Josh Chung also scored on a throwing error.
The mistakes only continued in the fourth.
“Those errors make it tough to win,” Watkins said.
St. Francis was making its second CCS final appearance. It lost a 1-0 heartbreaker to Branham High in the D-II Championship in 2014.
This one hurt a little more.
“It’s a tough pill to swallow,” Nakagawa said.
The Sharks graduated eight of their 15 players on Saturday morning, including six starters.
Gomez, Seymour, Granados-Diaz and four other juniors will return next season trying to continue the program’s recent postseason success.
St. Francis will also leave the SCCAL next season for the newly-formed Pacific Coast Athletic League, a 33-team super league containing the current members of the Mission Trail Athletic League and Monterey Bay League.
Gomez said the ending wasn’t perfect, but the journey to the final was something to be proud of.
“We got to where we wanted to be,” Gomez said. “We didn’t finish how we wanted to, but we had it in our hands. I’m very proud of these guys.”
