The Dons baseball team will play their final regular season game at the Patrick Henry Patriots’ home field on Thursday at 3:30. The Patrick Henry Patriots are 11-14 on the year and sit in 4th place in league standings with two prior losses to Cathedral this season. The first game ended in a 2-1 defeat of the Patriots; and the second ended 6-,  in Cathedral’s favor.

“We’ve played really well against Patrick Henry this year, so I think that we can keep up the same game plan as before. Limiting our mistakes as a team has been the team’s main focal point on the year, and I think we can continue the trend here,” junior outfielder Hunter Reh said.

The Dons head into the game on Thursday on a 10-game win streak and with their last loss coming from over a month ago versus the Scripps Ranch Falcons .

“I think what changed most for us was our mentality. When we were losing games, we didn’t have a lot of consistency and were sort of going through the motions. We finally decided to cut down our errors and focus mentally and physically,” said junior shortstop Quinn Hoffman.

The Dons continued their success last week with back-to-back wins versus Mira Mesa at home and at Mira Mesa’s field. The first game ended in a 3-0 win with a strong pitching performance from junior Sam Miller. Miller pitched 7 innings, allowing zero runs to go along with 1 hit and 8 strikeouts on the day.

“This was no doubt my best pitching performance this year. I had good command of all my pitches and had some help behind me defensively. When you only give up one hit, you know you’re doing something right on the mound,” Miller said.

Offensively, the Dons were led by senior outfielder Michael Guerena who went 4-4 on the day in addition to having an RBI single in the 3rd inning. The Dons continued their scoring in the 5th inning with RBI singles coming from senior third baseman John Cresto and senior outfielder Griffen Case.

The second game versus Mira Mesa was more of the same as the game resulted in a 7-0 Cathedral win at home. Senior Brandon Tran started on the mound and pitched 5 innings giving up 3 hits in addition to zero runs with three strikeouts. Junior Pat McLoughlin also pitched 2 strong innings with zero earned runs allowed.

“Pitching wise, we have been telling the pitchers the same thing all year. Trust in your pitches and be calm out there. Once you start getting rattled on the mound as a pitcher, nothing good comes of it,” pitching coach Rob Reiter said.

The Dons of course exploded on the offensive end, scoring 7 runs on the day, beginning in the 1st inning by senior John Cresto who went 3-3 with an RBI double. The second and third inning only got worse for Mira Mesa as they gave up 3 runs in each of the innings. In addition to Cresto, seniors Griffen Case, Michael Guerena, and Nicholas Mattera all were responsible for the Dons’ runs with each of them having at least 1 RBI and all of them never causing an out in the game.

“I think that playing them a in a back-to-back game only helped us because we knew what we had to improve on in order to play better. As you saw from the result, we did that, and it showed immensely,” junior pitcher Jordan Chang said.

The Dons most recent came against Patrick Henry yesterday ended in a score of 6-1 at the Dons home field. Senior Jonathan Pendergast began the game, pitching the first 5 innings and giving up only a homerun in his outing. Junior Preston Price closed the game, pitching the last two innings, shutting out Patrick Henry and striking out all 6 batters he faced.

“Jonathan pitched a really good game, so it was easy for me to come in and relive him. As a relief pitcher, it’s a lot easier if the starter pitches a good game and doesn’t put you in a jam that you have to try to fix,” Price said.

The Dons didn’t start their scoring until the 3rd inning when John Cresto hit a RBI double to center field, scoring seniors Toru Sugiura and Jacob Mullin. Senior Ryan Johnston continued the rally with a 2-out RBI single to score Cresto from first base. The Patrick Henry Patriots hit a homerun in the top of the fourth to keep up the scoring battle. In the bottom of the fourth inning, the Dons blew the game open when they scored 3 runs with RBI singles from seniors Clayton Dale and Michael Guerena.

The Dons have already clinched the Eastern League title with a record of 10-1 and are 3 games in front of the our rivals, the Saintsmen.

“Winning league is a big accomplishment, but it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t succeed in the playoffs. We do feel confident that this is the year we can take home CIF because we have a great group of guys and a solid team,” said junior Hunter Reh.