Fullerton cruised into a 15-2 win over Santa Barbara on Feb. 11, 2025 at Sherbeck Field in Fullerton. After trailing 2-1 for an inning and a half, Fullerton responded with 14 unanswered runs led by Nate Pone’s four for five performance at the plate.
The rally began with Diego Vazquez walking, then moved up to second on Ben Carter’s groundout. With two outs, Vazquez scored on consecutive wild pitches to tie the game.
After a Pone single and a two-out walk to Jacob Larson, Dillon Anderson hit his first pitch to right field to drive in the go-ahead run.
“Looking for the first pitch that I saw and just hit it,” said Anderson. In the bottom of the sixth is when they put the game away for good.
Up 8-2 they scored five runs with Vazquez leading off the inning with a triple and two batters later scoring on Noah Rodriguez’s RBI single to left. After Rodriguez stole second, Pone recorded his fourth hit of the game with an infield single that drove in Rodriguez. Larson walked and both Larson and Pone moved up an extra base on a wild pitch leading to Anderson’s second hit of the game.
Trevor Schmidt recorded his third hit of the game with a single to right. Jake Starr with runners on first and second and one out, hit one into right field leading to the fifth run of the inning. Fullerton has won five of their last six games after starting 1-3.
“We came together as a group collectively and I feel like Coach Baum and the coaching staff has really helped us make a lot of adjustments and get a lot better,” said Schmidt.
The highlight of the game was in the bottom of the seventh inning when Rodriguez came up to bat with a runner on first base and hit a 2-run home run over the left field wall making it fifteen to two.
“The first three at-bats of the game I had strikeouts, so I felt a little bit down on myself out on defense kind of working through the problem, my fourth at-bat I got a single run batted in,” said Rodriguez. “So I thought for my last at-bat, I’m just going to stick to catching it out in front and in a 1-0 count I’m looking for something out over and just told myself take a good swing and be on time.”
The pitching kept Santa Barbara down from the third inning on led by starting pitcher Julian Castro who went 4 ⅓ innings while working out of a fourth inning jam with two runners on and one out by getting a strikeout followed by a fly out to left field to end the Santa Barbara rally. Then in the top of the fifth inning with runners on the corners with one out Manny Lopez came in to pitch and struck out the first batter on three pitches followed by a flyout to the second base to get out of the jam and record his first win of the season.
Pone was able to settle down his pitchers during the mound visits to get each of them out of jams making quality pitches. “Sinkers down in the zone, they threw their fastball downhill and stay on top of it and let their ball run and do what it needs to do and get a lot of weak ground ball outs,” said Pone.
Peyton Lee and Joel Sanchez threw the last two innings of scoreless baseball.
The Hornets (6-4) are set to play Cerritos College on Friday, February 14, at Sherbeck Field for another non-conference matchup. Game time is at 1 p.m.
*This article was updated on Feb. 19, 2025. A previous version of this article stated that Fullerton vs. Santa Barbara took place on Feb. 11, 2024. The accurate date is Feb. 11, 2025.*