Chula Vista team wins World Series berth

The hats and gloves went flying. Twice, actually.

“Please, please, please,” Adriel Colmenero remembers thinking as the final out was reviewed.

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Park View fans celebrate as they watch their team win and improve their chances to earn a spot in the Little League World Series. Video by Hayne Palmour.

Park View Little League players, having retrieved their gear, were standing around the infield, nervous looks on their faces – until the homeplate umpire turned toward the field and raised his fist.

Park View had beat Mountain Ridge of Las Vegas 1-0 in the championship game of the Western Regional.

The gloves and hats sailed, maybe higher the second time.

And when the dog pile of jubilantly shaking bodies had dispersed and the team of 12- and 13-year-olds had done its victory lap, Colmenero waited for someone to pinch him.

“It feels like I’m dreaming,” he said. “I feel like I am going to wake up. I can’t believe we’re going to Williamsport.”

Yes, on some morning in the coming days, Colmenero and his teammates will wake up in South Williamsport, Pa.

They are the latest greatest team from San Diego’s South Bay, the fourth all-star team from within a 20-square-mile section in the past eight years to make the Little League World Series.

They made the final step on the strength of Victor Lizarraga’s one-hitter.

“I was really concentrating,” Lizarraga said after striking out 12 and not allowing a hit until the sixth (final) inning. “It was really exciting. I was very nervous.”

As he stood near home plate, amidst the celebration, the crowd of nearly 12,000 still mostly in the stands at Al Houghton Stadium, Lizarraga paused several times to catch his breath.

“Oh my God,” he said. “It feels better than I imagined.”

Lizarraga did not allow a ball to be put in play until two were gone in the third inning.

His performance Saturday followed six innings without allowing an earned run in Park View’s 10-inning victory in their opener here Sunday and a one-hitter in the state championship series that got Park View to the regional tournament.

“If we didn’t have him, it would be a different team,” Lucas Marrujo said.

Certainly.

But Park View, which scored its run in the fourth inning when Padilla’s bases-loaded grounder brought in Colmenero, was built with pitching and defense as its strengths. Both showed Saturday night.

Lizarraga struck out the first batter in the fifth, his 11th, before walking a batter. His next pitch was grounded to shortstop Ali Camarillo, who stepped on second and threw to first base for the double play.

And on the game’s final play, when a third strike bounced away from catcher Ant Soto and rolled along the grass toward first base, Soto barehanded the ball and fired to first base to beat the runner by a step.

“All I can say is I have 14 ballplayers,” manager Jorge Camarillo said. “At the end of the day, they find a way to get it done.”

For that, they will continue the legacy of the all-star teams from Park View (2009), Eastlake (’13) and Sweetwater Valley (’15) that went to the Little League World Series.

The team’s first game in South Williamsport, will be played at 1 p.m. PDT on Friday.

“It still hasn’t hit me yet,” Marrujo said. “I keep thinking of all the stuff we’re going to get. This is so amazing.”