Bear River Giants roll; gain Area II finals
All season long the Bear River Little League Giants have been using strong pitching, big hitting and steady defense to overwhelm the opposition on their way to a league title and a 20-plus win season.
Monday night in the winner’s bracket semi-finals of the District 11 Area II major division Tournament of Champions, the Giants were up to their old tricks.
Receiving no-hit pitching for five plus innings from ace hurler Josh Toft and key base hits from a host of his teammates, the Giants drubbed the Nevada City Red Sox, 7-1, to gain tonight’s Area II championship game.
In this evening’s 7 p.m. title bout slated for Bear River Little League Park, the Giants will square off with the Sierra Foothills Little League Giants from Colfax.
At stake will be a berth in the best of three District 11 championship series which will begin Thursday night at Bear River starting at 7 p.m.
The BRLL Giants-SFLL Giants winner will meet the winner of tonight’s Area I championship game in Lincoln between the Rocklin Rangers and the Tri-City A’s.
The Rangers blanked the Tri-City Cardinals, 3-0, on Monday while the Tri-City A’s came from behind to edge the Lincoln Cardinals, 8-7.
Game Two of the title round will be played Friday at Lincoln. A third game if necessary would shift back to Bear River on Saturday again at 7 p.m.
“We played a good, steady game on both offense and defense,” said Giants manager James Toft about his team’s triumph. “We were able to pick up some key hits at the right time.”
After two scoreless innings to start the game, the Giants got untracked when Tyler Toft legged out an infield hit to leadoff the third inning. After Toft stole second base, Josh Toft lined a single sending his brother home for a 1-0 Giants lead.
David Keaton then added another RBI single before Kyle Vandervort followed with a double that drove in a pair of runs and upped the count to 4-0.
From there the Giants rode the right arm of Josh Toft as the hard throwing Giants hurler did not allow a hit over the first five frames and fanned 13 batters before being lifted in the sixth inning due to the Little League mandated pitch count rule.
In the bottom of the fourth inning, the Giants added three more insurance tallies with two coming via a Josh Toft home run high over the barrier in centerfield.
Both Josh Toft (2x3, HR 3 RBIs) and Keaton (2x3, 2 RBIs) paired raps for the winners. Tyler Toft, Michael Raigoza and Kyle Vandervort (2b) also had key raps.
Skyler Carpenter’s single in the sixth inning broke up the no-hit bid by the Giants. The Red Sox, Nevada City’s “B” team enjoyed a strong TOC tourney with wins over Foresthill and Grass Valley’s Angels to reach the semi-finals.