LJ baseball: Playoffs into late May - a tradition

Vike ace Abel Delgadillo (shown here pitching

against Westview Tues., May 20) has had a lot

to do with reviving the La Jolla tradition of

baseball deep into May. He pitched a two-hitter

against the Wolverines.

(Photo by Ed Piper)

By Ed Piper

One of my fond recent memories is that, through the toil of the long school year (I'm a retired public school teacher--I still substitute-teach), I could look forward to covering the Viking baseball team in the playoffs near the end of the school year. (Softball didn't qualify for the playoffs in those years.)

I realize that the memory is fairly recent: In 2023, Coach Gary Frank's squad took a nose-dive, moved up to the Eastern League, getting buried in tough league competition. (I tried to check in late in the season back then--there was no word from Gary, who was the first coach to extend full hospitality to me as a photographer and writer covering his team, back to the first away regular-season game I traveled to at Canyon Crest Academy--must have been 2008 or so.)

Actually, the memory extends further than that. Before COVID. One year, the Vikings played an away game in the playoffs up the coast. The "other" school in Oceanside, El Camino, maybe. I drove all the way up there, gigantic camera equipment (which I used to use) in tow, and took photos of playoff action.

All the other spring sports teams would be done by then (I didn't cover postseason track back then). Lacrosse had put its equipment away. Boys' golf had dwindled down. Badminton wasn't on my radar. Boys' volleyball, though very successful, would be done earlier in the month of May. Girls' beach volleyball finished the earliest in May--playoffs scheduled for the first week of the month, usually.

So, "It's so good to have you back where you belong," Viking baseball. Hanging on by their toenails, but hanging on. It has been a good week for baseball, with La Jolla's play-in win Tues., May 20, over Westview, then the first game in double-elimination at Clairemont Wed., May 21, though a loss. But that can be overcome.

More to come Fri., May 23, with the Vikes playing at Bishop's to keep their season alive.

One of the challenges of the spring season is the sheer number of teams. Whereas the fall and winter seasons field "exes" number of teams, La Jolla's athletic program--as do other schools'--has 17 or more teams competing at any one time in the months leading up to the end of the school. (Seventeen is a number I recall from some past year.) That many teams is a lot to cover.