DENNIS SILVA II | STAFF WRITER
SAN JUAN — Edinburg Vela’s first-year baseball coach Jaime Perez couldn’t sleep after Friday’s Game 1 rout of PSJA High in their Class 5A bi-district series.
Perez had been in this position before. Either the past would repeat itself, or he would create a new memory.
“Back in 2006, I was in the same situation as head coach at PSJA North High School, up 1-0 in a series against Sharyland,” Perez said. “And they came back, got us twice. All night long I was fighting sleep, trying to find a way to motivate my club for what was coming.”
So what happened Saturday, when the two teams lined the field again for Game 2?
“Everything,” Perez said, his smile widening. “Everything just fell into place.”
The SaberCats added to their storybook season, rallying from a three-run deficit to beat the Bears 7-4 and sweep the series at PSJA High.
The dagger was junior outfielder Elijah Reyna’s two-out, two-run blast to left in the sixth inning that broke a 4-4 tie.
“I was looking for a curveball, but the pitcher gave me a fastball, right down the middle,” Reyna said. “I took my chance and swung as hard as I could.”
Just a couple of weeks after securing the third-year program’s first playoff berth, Vela (15-8) claimed a bi-district championship with relative ease.
“This is a huge step forward,” junior infielder John Treviño said. “Not many third-year programs can say they have a bi-district championship. It’s big as far as laying the foundation. A lot of these guys have been with us since the first year of our program. We couldn’t be more excited.”
Errors and a surge of SaberCat hitting late doomed the Bears (16-6-2), who spent most of the later innings of Saturday’s tilt wearing the look of a stunned ballclub. PSJA High had three miscues.
Still, the Bears were in it until the final at-bat, when senior slugger Christian Sanchez, boasting a .472 average with two homers this season, approached the plate with bases loaded and two outs. But it was an anticlimactic ending as Sanchez eventually lined out to centerfield.
“Compete, compete, compete,” Vela’s freshman left-handed reliever Aaron Galvan said of the at-bat. “That’s all that was going through my mind. Compete and keep the ball low. The curveball came out, he swung early and it was a line drive. We got away with it.”
The SaberCats may have escaped with that, but they earned everything else. The Bears went ahead 3-0 in the third inning, two runs coming on passed balls, before Vela rallied.
Perez inserted Galvan into the game for starter J.P. Longoria with two outs in the third inning, a move that flummoxed PSJA High.
“We’ve had trouble with left-handed pitchers all year long,” PSJA High coach Marco Guajardo said. “Not only that, but he throws a lot slower. Against faster guys, we hit the ball a little better. We were trying to get as much as we could out of the first guy knowing (Perez) was going to bring in the lefty and keep us off balance.
“Our swings just slowed down.”
Perez knew teams have a hard time hitting curveballs from lefties. Once he saw Galvan notch strikeouts on a curveball, changeup and fastball, he knew he had something working.
“I just did my best to keep the ball down low,” said Galvan, who pitched 4.1 innings and allowed one run on three hits while striking out four and walking three. “The changeup worked well. The fastball away, two-seam moving way. It kept them swinging.”
From there, Vela rolled. The Bears had no answer for Galvan, and the SaberCats’ offense woke up.
Treviño’s two-out RBI double in the third started it off. Fabian Pedraza added another RBI double moments later.
RBI singles from Troy Treviño and Johnny Davila sandwiched a Kike Rubio RBI single for the Bears that stymied Vela momentum briefly.
But Reyna’s bomb gave it right back.
“I think we did a good job of keeping our heads up and not getting down,” Reyna said. “We stayed at an even keel.”
And perhaps that means fewer restless nights for Perez. At least, that is, until next week’s area round matchup against Victoria East.