Valley Star

Issue date: 3/2/05 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Greg Burmann BRINGING THE HEAT - The Monarchs´ pitcher Jorge Olmedo led Valley to a 2-0 victory over Mission College with 8 strike outs and 8 hits. Greg Burmann / Valley Star

The Monarchs Baseball team won its first conference game of the season with a 2-0 victory over rival Mission College on Saturday. The triumph brings the team to 1-0 conference and 6-4 over all.

It was the first time for the Monarchs' new head coach Dave Mallas to face his former team, who he coached until this season.

"It was exciting and fun," said Mallas. "Mission was my first coaching job as a head coach and I thank that program for giving me that opportunity."

It was the Monarchs' returning pitcher Jorge Olmedo who pitched nine solid innings while striking out eight, allowing no walks and only eight hits during a nine-inning game.

"It feels real good to be winning once again," said Olmedo. "It is Coach Dave's efforts that brought us to victory once again. I am excited about our season."

While Mallas understands it is merely the beginning of the season, he points out there is a lot of room for improvement.

"We got an outstanding amount of help from Jorge Olmedo, which caused [Mission's] offense to collapse early," said Mallas. "We had couple of good opportunities to open the game up, but we weren't able to take advantage of them."

While the Monarchs had a great defense, the offense was not as impressive. During the second half of the game, the Monarchs had three chances to score big when they had full bases, but they missed all three times in easy outs.

Nevertheless, this was a big improvement for the Monarchs' baseball team that had a record of 5-98 during the last three seasons.

"We are looking good once again, but we still need to get better on the bat," said sophomore DJ Lewis. "But we are just getting started."

Coach Mallas is not the only one new to Monarchs' baseball. Most of the players on the team are Mallas' players who followed him from Mission in hopes to win the league championship this season.

This win marked a big return for the Monarchs - a team that's been struggling the last few seasons. With three new coaches on the field, including the head coach, the team is off to an optimistic start this season.

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