Faulkner: Lone loss fueled Sage Hill

A historic Sage Hill School baseball season that will culminate in the CIF Southern Section Division 6 title game Saturday has been defined by 26 consecutive wins and the peerless pitching of Brett Super and Ashwin Chona.

But the foundation beneath a 27-1 campaign, Coach Dominic Campeau said, was forged on Feb. 27, when the Lightning played host to Windward for an opening-day doubleheader.

Super and Chona, who are both 12-0 entering Saturday’s title clash against Academy League rival Crean Lutheran (23-7) at 3:30 p.m. at UC Riverside, both pitched in Game 1, which Sage won, 8-1.

Super, a junior, started and threw four scoreless innings, while Chona, a freshman, finished up by allowing two hits in three innings.

Another freshman started Game 2 for Sage and Windward roughed him up, scoring eight runs (six earned) on nine hits in 2 2/3 innings of an 8-4 Windward victory that left the Lightning 1-1.

More than three months and an Orange County-record 26 straight wins later, Campeau said there has been some reflection about the pitching plan that day.

“As a coaching staff, we always talk about that game,” Campeau said of the setback in which Sage managed just five hits and committed two errors. “We all wonder if we could have done something differently. But really, [the loss] could have been the best thing to ever happen to us. From the beginning of the year, we knew that if we didn’t play the way we were supposed to, if we didn’t follow the plan, we could lose. I wonder if we started the season at 8-0, 9-0 or 10-0, if we may have felt like we would never lose and we would have started slacking off and gotten caught. So, starting 1-1 I think actually paid off for us. From that game on, we knew we had to play hard and we had to play right, otherwise we could lose at any time.”

When it comes to devising the plan, the Lightning has an uncommonly accomplished coaching staff that includes former longtime Dodgers bullpen coach Mark Cresse and 16-year MLB veteran Chris Gomez.

In addition, pitching coach Mike Sanchez pitched eight seasons in the minor leagues, while assistant Jude Hernandez also played in the minor leagues after competing for Cal State Fullerton.

Campeau, a native of Quebec, Canada, was a catcher for the Canadian national team who also had a brief minor league career.

Campeau said he played with Sanchez and Hernandez on the Quebec Capitals of the independent Northern League in 1999. When he moved to California from Florida to take a teaching job at Sage Hill in 2012 (he became head coach in 2013), he reconnected with Sanchez and Hernandez and asked both to join his staff two years ago.

Cresse, who calls pitches and aligns the defense, and Gomez, who played shortstop for the San Diego Padres in the 1998 World Series and now works with infielders and coaches first base, are in their first season coaching the Lightning.

“It’s incredible,” Campeau said of what he considers the best high school staff in the country. “They know so much about the game and they are all great with kids. And because of the credentials they have, the kids will listen to them. It makes my job a lot easier.”

Cresse, 64, was a third-round draft pick of the St. Louis Cardinals in 1971 and during 25 seasons on the Dodgers coaching staff (through 1998), founded the renowned Mark Cresse School of Baseball in 1984.

Gomez, 44, who played for eight teams from 1993 through 2008, accumulated 1,206 hits, 60 home runs and 487 RBIs and a career .262 batting average in the big leagues (.364 in 11 World Series at-bats).

“Gomez and Cresse called me out of the blue wanting to be involved,” Campeau said. “I am extremely lucky. We all do things we are good at and we work really, really well together. It’s fantastic to work with guys who have such a high level of experience who absolutely know what they are doing. A lot of coaches out there say they have the best coaching staff in the nation, but I seriously believe that I do.”

While underclassmen typically represent more than half of the Sage Hill lineup, including heralded freshmen Chona and outfielder Eddie Pelc, who leads the team in several offensive categories, Campeau said the senior trio of Cole Tait, Conner Bock and Toby Bush has paved the way for the program’s recent emergence.

“When I got here, those three guys were freshman who took baseball very seriously from the beginning,” Campeau said. “They were baseball players before they started at Sage, and this program had always only had guys who wanted to play baseball. There’s a big difference. The seniors aren’t the most vocal guys, but they do things right and that has had a big impact on our young players.”

Tait (NYU) and Bock (Cal) will continue their baseball careers in college, while Bush will attend Colorado, which does not have a baseball team.