By Ed Piper
Shortstop Jake Klimkiewicz slammed a home run, but it wasn't enough as La Jolla's baseball team dropped a 5-2 decision to host Oceanside in the two teams' season opener Tues., March 23.
Another Viking hitter, Luke Roberts, had an RBI double in the top of the first against the Pirates.
"Typical" was LJHS head coach Gary Frank's characterization of his team's performance. "It's what you would expect after 12 months off" due to COVID, he said.
Frank wasn't critical of his team. The long period of inactivity, which cancelled last year's season, necessitated players working out on their own during distance learning at school, and for long stretches of time, little activity or movement at all.
Frank has talked more than once over the past year about the challenges to his players of moving around, doing exercise, anything, with the powers that be not helping matters by shutting down all school sports and other activities--in addition to in-person academic classes--from March 13, 2020 through the turn of the year.
Ace senior righthander Gavin Graff went 3 2/3 innings before surrendering to a reliever in a four-run Oceanside fourth inning that proved to be his undoing. All four Pirate runs in that inning were credited to Graff. Hurlers Kevin Steel and Ryan Lancaster went the rest of the way on the mound for the visitors.
Steel, a junior, picked up for Graff in the troublesome fourth and pitched 1 1/3 innings. Senior Lancaster threw the bottom of the sixth.
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