Petaluma beats American Canyon to claim VVAL baseball championship

The Petaluma baseball team won its ninth straight game on Wednesday, downing American Canyon 7-3, and in doing so clinched the Vine Valley Athletic League regular-season title.

The Trojans (14-5, 9-0), the No. 2 team in The Press Democrat’s top 10, scored four runs in the first, then saw the Wolves (1-20, 0-10) whittle their lead down to one after two innings before finally pulling away with a three-run seventh.

Wyatt Davis went 3 for 4 with a home run, a double and three RBIs to lead Petaluma offensively. Colin Landry hit a triple with an RBI and Joe Brown added an RBI with a hit.

Jack Palmer entered in relief of starter Brayden Breen and went 4⅓ innings with nine strikeouts, two hits and a walk.

No. 3 Casa Grande pulled away from Justin-Siena late on Wednesday to improve to 15-6 overall and 6-4 in the VVAL.

The Gauchos led 1-0 through five innings but broke the game open with a five-run sixth.

Brice Cox drove in two runs, Wyatt Abramson went 3 for 4 with a double and an RBI and Kaden Ramirez and Dylan Petersen each had two hits with an RBI.

Girls lacrosse

Casa Grande won the VVAL West Tournament Championship title on Tuesday as it defeated Cardinal Newman 12-5 at Cardinal Newman High School.

While the Gauchos (11-8, 7-1) and Cardinals (9-5, 7-1) share league championship honors, Casa Grande’s win in the league tournament earns it the automatic bid to the North Coast Section playoffs, which start next week.

Tuesday was the third meeting of the season between the two league rivals. They had split the season series to date, with Casa Grande taking the first meeting 17-4 before Cardinal Newman evened things up with an 11-9 win a few weeks later.

This time around, it was all Gauchos. Natalie Labanowski scored her first of a game-high six goals 45 seconds into the contest. About a minute later, Taylor Pieri added another before Labanowski netted three more goals over the following four minutes to put Casa Grande firmly in the driver’s seat with a 5-0 lead six minutes into the game.

Lily Zichichi and lla Holland each added a goal before the half to make it 7-2 at the intermission.

In the second half, Labanowski and Pieri added two more goals apiece to help the Gauchos cruise to the finish.

Pieri finished with three goals, while Sierra Schmidt added two with four assists and Megan Marston chipped in a solo goal. As she has all season, goalie Trinity Salus was stellar in goal, recording nine saves in the win.

Holland led the Cardinals with a pair of goals while Kathryn Clark and Taiten Kolpin had a goal and assist apiece and goalie Tessa Taylor recorded four saves on the evening.