WAIPAHU, Hawai`i—The best season for a Hawai`i Hilo baseball team in the past seven years ended on a high note Sunday with a 7-3 victory over Hawai`i Pacific at Hans L `Orange Park.
The Sharks won the first game of Sunday's doubleheader 3-2, clinching the season series (4-2). Hawai`i Hilo finished the year 21-27 and 16-22 in the Pacific West Conference, while HPU ends 2018 at 22-28 overall and 15-25 in league play.
The 21-27 record for the Vulcans is the best for a UH Hilo team since the 2011 squad coached by Joey Estrella finished 21-25.
After dropping the opener by a single digit, the Vulcans finished the year with an offensive splash. They scored five runs in the first inning and went on to slash 14 hits in a game in which they never trailed.
The Vulcans opened the contest with five consecutive hits and a walk.
Kyle Yamada started the rally off with a double, and singles followed off the bats of
Jonathan Segovia,
Phillip Steering,
RJ Romo and
Edwin Stanberry. Steering and Stanberry's hits drove in runs, and Kilo Zuttermeister's walk brought home another.
Dylan Sugimoto was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded to add another run, and when it was all said and done, five runs had scored on five hits, with three runners still left on base.
Romo doubled and scored in the second inning and the visitors added another insurance run in the fourth when
Reese Kato and Zuttermeister singled, with Kato scoring after an HPU error. That would be plenty of runs for Vulcan starting pitcher
Kyle Alcorn, who gave up just two runs while working 6.1 innings. He scattered nine hits and fanned four batters, evening his record at 3-3 in his rookie year.
He got relief help from Deric Valoroso, Jr. and
Cole Nakachi, both of whom threw a perfect two-thirds of an inning. Romo had three hits in the game, while two hits each were registered by Segovia, Steering, Stanberry and Kato.
The first game was a pitching duel between
Travis Burleson of UHH and Evan-Thomas May of HPU. Both pitchers posted zeros on the scoreboard into the bottom of the fifth inning of the scheduled seven-inning PacWest game.
The Sharks finally broke through in the fifth. A two-run double by Ryan Torres-Torioka and another RBI-two bagger by Codi Santana chased Burleson and put three runs on the scorecard (3-0).
The Vulcans loaded the bases in the sixth inning but couldn't score, and then finally made a last gap effort in their last at-bats in the seventh. Zuttermeister doubled to lead off the inning, and Sugimoto followed with a single and stolen base. Segovia, playing in his final games as a senior, ripped a single up the middle to score them both to cut the lead to one run (3-2).
Steering kept the rally alive with single, moving Segovia to second with the tying run, but a ground out ended the game and preserved the win for the Sharks and May.
Burleson took the loss (4-6), and Segovia led the Vulcans at the plate with two hits and the two runs driven in. On the day, Segovia and Romo had four hits each.
The Vulcans, who graduated ten players from this squad on Saturday, finished the year with 13 more wins than they had in 2017 (8-31-1).
