Citrus Splits Series with Ohlone

Citrus College Baseball hosted the CCCBCA North Regional No. 10 ranked Ohlone College this past weekend for a two-game series, with each team getting a win.

Ohlone won game one on Friday, February 21st 18-4 and Citrus won game two, yesterday, February 22nd by a score of 17-16.

Citrus College goes to 5-8 overall on the season, while Ohlone College adds their only loss on the season at 12-1.

Although the Owls took an early lead in game one, the Renegades offense proved to be too much as they scored 18 runs after recording 20 hits, including a 10-run top of the seventh inning. Citrus was led by Joshua Cortinas who went 2-for-4 with one RBI, Luke Willison went 2-for-3 with one run scored, while Nathan Hellein went 2-for-4 with one run scored. Jordan Quintero led the Owls with two RBIs.

Game two was a much different game as the Owls went up 10-3 after four innings thanks to RBIs from Derek Leader, Joshua Cortinas, Kirk Felikian and Danyal Jenkins including a grand slam off the bat of Nathan Hellein in the bottom of the third inning. Luke Willison hit an RBI double to score Hellein in the bottom of the fifth inning to give the Owls an 11-4 lead before the Renegades stormed back scoring seven runs in the top of the seventh inning to take a 12-11 lead. Ohlone added two runs in both the top of the eighth and ninth innings to go up 16-11 going into the bottom of the ninth inning. After Chase Bernal drew a lead-off walk, Luke Willison got hit by a pitch and Ezekiel Escalera got hit by a pitch, Alex Salazar hit a two-RBI single to make the score 16-14. Isaac Nava launched a walk-off 3-run home run to clinch the win for the Owls, their biggest win of the season so far.

Citrus College will travel to Cypress College for their next game on Tuesday, February 25 for a 1:30 p.m. game.