May 15 high school notebook: SEYL perfection becoming part of Patriots' lore
| Thursday, May 14 2009 10:36 PM
Last Updated Thursday, May 14 2009 11:13 PM
The sun gets warmer, the days get longer and Liberty's baseball team wins a league championship.
Ah, spring in Bakersfield.
Liberty routed East High 19-2 on Tuesday to sew up its seventh Southeast Yosemite League baseball championship in seven tries.
Even more remarkable: The Patriots, who close the regular season today at Garces, have won 37 league games in a row and 54 of their past 55, with a 2006 loss to Bakersfield the only blemish in that time.
Coach Tony Mills started at the school in 2007 and is 35-0 in league play.
"I've been blessed," Mills said. "We take one game at a time, and we try to grind it pitch by pitch. We preach to our kids, respect our opponents, whether we're playing Bakersfield or Stockdale or Golden Valley. We try to respect the game and play it the way it's meant to be played."
Mills also became the school's football coach last fall and went 5-1 in the SEYL, with a tight opening loss to BHS.
As for this year's version of the baseball team, it's relied on the hitting prowess of shortstop Chris Neal, who boasts a .478 average, 10 home runs, 14 doubles and 52 RBIs; Jordan Howard, who's at .393 with seven homers and 36 RBIs; and Kevin Younger, .415 with six homers and 38 driven in.
Howard, Omar De Haro and Rufie Fessler are a combined 17-6 on the mound with a 2.85 ERA.
"This year's team has really proved itself," Mills said. "They just find a way to win. Plus, we're pitching lights-out right now."
For all of the Patriots' league success under Mills, they've yet to translate that to the Division I Central Section playoffs, where they've lost in early rounds each of the past two years, last year on a walk-off home run by Clovis West in the quarterfinals.
That kind of competition will be the norm for Liberty starting in the 2011 baseball season when it joins a league with Stockdale, Centennial and Frontier.
"It's going to benefit everybody at all levels," Mills said. "Sure, we might take some lumps, but if you win a Division I league, that's really going to mean something towards (playoff) seedings."
In the mean time, the Patriots will attempt to continue their remarkable winning streak in the SEYL -- where neither opponents nor baseball's random chance and luck have derailed them in more than three years.
"We don't get sidetracked and worry about things we can't control," Mills said. "Just go out there and try to win game after game."
Hobson national award winner
Stockdale senior K.C. Hobson was named the ESPN RISE National Athlete of the Week on May 7 after his three-home run, near-no hitter performance against Frontier the week before.
Hobson almost hit for a home run "cycle" in the game, blasting a solo shot in his first at-bat, a two-run homer in his second, then a three-run homer. He came up with the bases loaded his fourth time up and doubled off the wall. He finished with eight RBIs.
On the mound, the Titans broke up Hobson's no-hit bid in the bottom of the seventh. He also one-hit Centennial the following week.
Hobson is the second Kern County athlete in two weeks to be honored in front of a larger audience. Last week, Shafter's Anna Jelmini was the CalHiSports' state athlete of the week after she tied the national record in the discus.
Where are they now?
Stockdale graduate Jenna Hicks recently was named the San Jose State female Scholar-Athlete of the Year for 2008-09.
She was team captain for the Spartans' 2008 women's cross country team. In five races, she had three top-25 finishes. Her best finish was ninth at the San Francisco State Invitational, helping the Spartans to second place -- their best team finish of the season.
Following the 2008 season, Hicks, a nursing major, was named Academic All-WAC for the third year in a row.
