Hawk’s Hitting Sparks Dolphins

By STEVE GALLUZZO | Sports Editor      

Roman Hawk was locked in at the plate last Tuesday against Taft. The Palisades High baseball senior had four hits, including two home runs and a double, drove in six runs and scored three more to lead his team to a 13-2 tournament victory in Woodland Hills.   

Hudson Ramberg, Jack Kurland and Ian Sullivan added two hits apiece and sophomore pitcher Caleb Gitlin had three RBIs and pitched all five innings, allowing three hits with five strikeouts as the Dolphins posted their seventh win in a row. Three days earlier, Jett Teegardin scattered four hits and struck out 11 batters in six innings in a 6-2 tournament win against North Hollywood.   

Last Thursday, Palisades’ win streak ended in a tough 1-0 loss at Verdugo Hills. David Castaneda drove in Isaiah Guevara in the bottom of the sixth for the game’s only run and senior reliever Milo Medeiros struck out two Dolphins in the top of the seventh to save it for starting pitcher D’Angelo Duran, who allowed one hit (to Kurland) in six innings. Sullivan threw five innings, allowing three hits with seven strikeouts.

On Saturday, Palisades battled Granada Hills in nonleague action and the host Highlanders prevailed 7-0. Sullivan and Andreas Konnari each had two hits for the Dolphins, who dropped their fourth straight to the Highlanders since blanking Granada Hills 2-0 in the quarterfinals of the City Open Division playoffs in 2019.

Palisades returned to its winning ways Monday at Pote Field in Griffith Park with a 15-6 win against University. Logan Bailey, Sullivan, Gitlin and Hudson Ramberg each had two hits and Hawk threw 3.2 innings, striking out four and surrendering just two hits as the Dolphins improved to 12-8 overall and 9-3 in the Western League.       
   Only once has head coach Mike Voelkel, who picked up his 300th win with the Dolphins on March 7, failed to get his team into the Open Division­—last spring when they lost at home to South East in the first round of Division I—but he knows the Dolphins likely need to win their final eight games (including road victories over Western League frontrunner Venice and reigning City Open champion Bell) to have any shot at making the top bracket, which has been reduced from 12 to eight schools.