State NorCal baseball: Sixth inning eruption leads Pacific Grove past Urban
PACIFIC GROVE — Senior vacation plans were put on hold. For eight recent graduates, getting a chance to play baseball together one more week and leave an imprint on a program and a community in Pacific Grove made the decision simple.
“We had a great turnout today,” center fielder Brody Edmonds said. “It shows how much it means, not just to us, but to the school and community. It gives us a bigger purpose to play, which we’ve been doing all year.”
While the bats were slow to come around, a six-run eruption in the sixth inning Tuesday catapulted the Breakers to a 10-3 win over Urban of San Francisco in the State Northern California Division V quarterfinals.
Pacific Grove, which is making its first-ever appearance in the tournament, will travel to face No. 2 seed Skyline of Oakland — 5-1 winners over Los Molinos — on Thursday in the semifinals.
On the heels of the program’s first Central Coast Section title in 13 years last Saturday, the Breakers have outscored four playoff opponents 32-9.
“It’s a little surreal,” Pacific Grove Craig Bell said. “We keep getting better. It’s such a close group. There is never any finger-pointing. Instead, it’s ‘I got your back’. Even when we struggled at the end of the season, we were going in the right direction.”
Champions of Premiere Division League, the Titans won the Oakland Section title, avenging their only league loss in the postseason to Oakland Tech.
Skyline hit just .261 as a team this past spring, while its pitching staff compiled a 3.93 team earned run average, with 192 strikeouts in 158 innings of work.
“You have one shot at this,” said Edmonds, who will pitch next year at Santa Clara. “We haven’t had a lot of time to think about this. We still have a goal in front of us. We’re super stoked to keep going.”
Edmonds, who missed the football and basketball seasons after breaking his arm pitching over the summert, collected three more hits to raise his batting average over .400 for the season.
“We played with a lot of energy today,” Edmonds said. “It just took us until the sixth inning to get going at the plate. We have to start this thing earlier. But we got it done. It’s about how we compete.”
While the scouting report told the Breakers that the velocity on Urban’s pitches would suggest more off-speed stuff, they struggled at the plate with their patience.
“We told them why do we have to wait until the sixth inning to get going?” joked Bell. “It was our job to be patient. And we just were not in the early innings.”
The Breakers, who have improved in the win column four straight years, have seen a nine-game improvement this year in picking up their 18th win of the season.
Clinging to a one-run lead after a sacrifice fly in the fifth from Grady Burczynski, the Breakers’ bats unloaded in the sixth, with Taj Davis and Andrew Jeska both delivering run-scoring singles.
“Hitting got contagious,” Bell said. “We stuck to the plan. We were hunting for strikes. We were patient at the plate. I think you saw the results.”
Jeska, who finished with three hits, drove in a pair during the six-run inning. Earlier in the game, Davis executed a suicide squeeze to tie the game at 2-2. Pacific Grove has laid down two suicide squeezes in the last two games.
“During the game, the focus is between the lines,” Bell said. “But after the game, it was nice to see all the support.”
A double by Isaac Sanchez in the third inning scored Edmonds to give Pacific Grove an early 1-0 lead. Betinho Zunguze’s sacrifice fly in the fourth put them back up 3-2.
Wes Boulware hurled three innings of relief to pick up the win for the Breakers, with Hunter Scheiber tossing a scoreless seventh.
“Everybody wants this,” Bell said. “Vacation plans changed. The season is going to end either on Thursday or Saturday. These kids want to cherish this.”
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This story was originally published June 2, 2026 at 8:32 PM.