BH Little League All-Stars Fall to West L.A.

The West Los Angeles Little League 9 & 10-year-old baseball all-stars routed Beverly Hills 15-1 in four innings Monday to emerge out of the loser's bracket in the District 25 Tournament and set up a final round rematch with Santa Monica West, which beat West LA 11-3 in the winner's bracket quarterfinals. 

The loss eliminated Beverly Hills, which had needed three and a half hours to outlast Ladera 18-12 the day before. 

"The kids played fantastic, they just ran out of gas," said Beverly Hills Manager Steve Witmer, who coached the A's to second place in the regular season. "We hung with them for awhile but I think fatigue finally caught up with us in the third inning."

Nick Barnouw singled to score Caleb Gerber to give Beverly Hills a 1-0 lead in the top of the second inning but West LA tied it in the bottom half.

After Beverly Hills came up empty in its next at-bat, West LA batted around twice and scored 14 runs in the bottom of the third inning. Russell Burton led off with a triple and the key hit was a three-run home run by Max Kozak.

"Our boys can hit," West LA Manager Sean Burton said of his team's approach against Beverly Hills. "On defense we wanted to stay focused and let them put the ball in play. At the plate we wanted to wait for a good pitch and be aggressive."

West LA and Santa Monica West play Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at the Ladera Little League diamonds and if Santa Monica West wins, it clinches the championship. If West LA wins, it will force a decisive game Wednesday at the same time.

Rounding out the Beverly Hills all-stars are Calvin Koo, Jacob Kalt, Evan Pizzurro, Aaron Abramov, Noah Drinkward-Hermann, Nathan Bauer, Oren Rimmon, Jayden Klimeck, Maclean Witmer, Ian White, Seamus Neal and Judah Gould.  

Beverly Hills beat University 13-5 in its tournament opener, edged Ladera 12-11 in the second round and lost to Santa Monica West in the finals of the winner's bracket. That dropped Beverly Hills to the loser's bracket where it won Sunday's rematch with Ladera.

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