Strong batting and pitching helped the Serra Cavaliers baseball team secure a 10-6 victory over the La Salle Lancers. The Cavaliers survived the Lancers’ competitive resurgence in later innings; with the win, Serra had a 10-2 overall record and a 15-5 Del Ray league record on April 13.
“This is probably one of the best that we had in a very long time, since 2013, our championship year. We’re league champs,” said Cavaliers head coach Artis Perry. “This team is really good offensively, defensively, we got a lot of young pitching, young talent, so I’m excited about the future.”
Junior Nigel Buckley hit a home run to put the Cavaliers on the scoreboard; hits by sophomore Henry Sorman, juniors Hunter Backstrom, and Malik Balloue gave Serra a 5-0 advantage by the end of the first inning.
“We’re doing real good, we’re hitting well,” Buckley said about their season. “We’re finding ways to win even when we might make some errors and might have fewer mistakes.”
Buckley leads the team in home runs, RBIs, and batting average.
“He’s been doing it all year,” Perry said about Buckley’s home runs. “Hopefully that just rolls right over to playoffs and next year as well and then go to college and hopefully get drafted.”
Sophomore pitcher Jaden Harris held the Lancers to 15 at bats in the four innings that he pitched, only allowing one run. Perry called Harris “electric,” noting how he would have Harris pitch entire games earlier in the season.
“He’s beaten every team in our league at least once, he beat Bishop Amat,” Perry said. “He has command of every pitch that he throws, he pounds the strike zone and he finds ways to get out.”
La Salle replaced sophomore Kyle Lima with sophomore Adrian Jr. Beltre, forcing the Serra batters to adjust.
“It was a little disadvantage when [Beltre] came up to pitch, it was a little faster,” Harris said. “We had to pick up the pace a little bit, but overall we adjusted pretty quickly.”
The Cavaliers are ranked 14th in division IV of the Southern Section. Perry noted how the players have a team-first mentality.
“There’s some days where guys don’t get in just because of the complexity of the game and then there’s days like this where everybody gets in,” he said. “They understand the bigger picture here.”
