Jennifer Jimenez

West Valley Preps

Sunrise Mountain senior Troy Balko nearly threw a perfect game Thursday for the Mustangs against neighborhood rival Liberty.

In the top of the fifth inning, Lions senior Trevor Felan hit a single that was knocked down by Sunrise Mountain’s third baseman Caleb Thomason, but Felan outran the throw.

“It was good that my ball was staying down the command was really there. I struggled a little bit in the beginning innings,” Balko said. “I just have to trust my pitching and my coach says to trust my pitches and trust what I am doing, and my defense will be there for me.”

Balko said the Mustangs' number one goal is to play on May 14 at the state championship game.

Sunrise Mountain head coach Eric Gardner said Balko has been good since summer ball and has grown into an ace's role in the last six months.

“He throws a heavy pitch and keeps the ball down and has two good pitches and throws the secondary pitch for a strike on a regular basis,” Gardner said. “He has great command and gave up the one hit which was an infield single and he really just kept competing and the most impressive part is the (Brady) Welch kid in the middle of their order was shut down and that was pretty impressive to me.”

Gardner said while Balko’s pitching was outstanding, even more impressive was his team’s offense. The Mustangs earned 14 hits off two strong arms in Isaiah Montoya and Chandler Murphy.

He said the team was attacking fastballs all day long with big plays from Jacob Stockton, who earned an early double and RBI single, and then Trevor Pruitt at the bottom of the lineup with a big late double.

“And I can’t say enough about senior EJ Sua who had a big triple early and a big double late and the guy just ambushes fast balls,” Gardner said. “We were aggressive when we needed to be, and we’ve always been known as a great defensive and pitching team, but today our offense came with that too.”

Sunrise Mountain jumped out to an early 4-0 lead in the first inning. The Mustangs added three more in the second inning and two more in the fourth, before ending the game after just six innings on a single RBI from Thomason up the middle to earn the 10-0 win.

Gardner said Liberty is a good team, that just had an off day and they will play deep into the playoffs. He said it was great for his kids to beat the Lions, but even bigger when you look at power points.

“This team is going to have a ton of wins and that will put us in the right direction and we just started this season and it doesn’t get any easier, so we have some challenges ahead and we are only going to get better. But this is an exciting day for our seniors,” Gardner said.

Liberty head coach Chris Raymond said Sunrise Mountain captured the momentum of the game and never looked back. A year ago, this result was reversed, with the Lions winning by the run rule 10-0 in five innings.

He said they are trying to work as a team to play one game at a time, one at-bat, one pitch and one inning to try to get better.

“We have to try to grow and understand if we break the game down to small pieces we can be successful,” he said.

Sunrise Mountain's EJ Sua (#10) hits for a two-run triple against Liberty on Thursday, March 1, 2018 at Sunrise Mountain High School in Peoria. [Jacob Stanek/West Valley Preps][/caption]