One More Win For La Mesa National Little League

La Mesa National Little League powered though a triple header of games Saturday.

All three All Stars teams played, with the 9-10’s and 10-11’s facing elimination unless they won.  To increase the challenge, the 9-10’s played a Friday evening game then moved forward to a Saturday 10am game.  The 9-10’s stepped up to the challenge admirably, with a 7 to 5 win over Tierrasanta on Friday and a 13 to 0 win over San Carlos on Saturday.

During Friday’s game, James Odom scored two over the wall home runs in the same inning.  Not to be outdone, Noah Flores then achieved the exact same feat during Saturday’s game.

The La Mesa National 11-12 All Stars faced Allied Gardens at Rolando Field.  A pitching trifecta of Joe Williams, Jackson Hulett, and Matthew Chesnut, worked to keep the Allied Gardens batters from hitting, while Austin Odom, remembering his brothers hits the previous day, scored his own over the wall homer.

Amazingly, the game ended in 6 innings after only an hour and ten minutes play with a final score of La Mesa National 4, Allied Gardens 0.  As the team gathered on the field for a post game talk with their coaches, one of the players could be heard to shout “One more win for LMN!”

In contrast to the speedy 11-12 game, the 10-11 All Star match, taking over three hours, was a long fight to the finish.  La Mesa National also faced Allied Gardens, and the game was held at Kuhlken Field in La Mesa.

Both teams were required to rest their primary pitchers, so there was a continuous rotation of the pitching reserves during the game.  La Mesa National started strong, with base hits and subsequent runs from Hunter NIckell and Nick Salisbury.  Unperturbed, Allied Gardens fought back and the score at the end of the first inning was 2 to 3.

La Mesa soon regained the lead with a powerful rally only to see it again disappear to tenacious play from Allied Gardens.  The game continued with a series of long innings played in the hot sun.  Both teams fought hard with the balance of play moving back and forth.  The game finally ended with a 16 to 15 squeaker La Mesa National win.

The 9-10 and 10-11 teams will play again on Sunday.  Winning teams, including the 11-12 team play on Monday.