Agoura Vipers finish successful season of baseball at AAU Nationals
By Steve Ames
Special to The Acorn

While the Agoura Vipers baseball team broke even—-three wins, three losses—in the Amateur Athletic Union 14 and under National Championship at Sarasota, Fla., earlier this month, head coach Steve Rivetti said the team can be happy with its performance.

Only six teams from Southern California qualified for the 68-team tournament and the Vipers, among the tourney’s top 20 teams, were the only team from North Los Angeles County, Ventura County, Santa Barbara County or San Luis Obispo County to do so.

"Overall we proved to ourselves that we could play with any of the teams in the country. Kids had to play in every kind of condition imaginable – heat and humidity, mosquitoes, everything," Rivetti said.

"They responded very, very well. Our defense was pretty solid. We ended up having two weeks of good practice before we went. With a little luck we could have been 4-2 or 5-1.

"We were right there with the best teams in the country. When you go to a tournament, you have to play your best ball because you are facing the best teams."

The tourney began with 18 pools of four teams. The objective for each team was to get to the championship bracket. Agoura came in second in the bracket in the initial pool.

In the first game the Vipers beat the West Fairfax, Va. Generals, 6-5, as Robert Dickman (Woodland Hills) began on the mound and Josh Alessi (Agoura Hills) pitched two strong innings to close the game. Alessi singled twice.

The Virginia Bullets, one of the top ranked teams in the that state, beat Agoura 10-4 in the second game.

"We really hit the ball very hard," Rivetti said. "We were playing on very large complexes, 400 feet to centerfield."

Against the Bullets, Agoura left the bases loaded three times. Only two batters struck out and the rest of the batters hit deep fly ball outs.

With a 1-1 record, the third game was a must win. Playing the North Carolina Hurricanes, ranked third in that state, the Vipers won, 11-2.

"We had a strong pitching performance from Jamie Cipriano (Agoura Hills) who was pulled because of an injury to his arm," Rivetti said.

Shaunt Bedrosian (Granada Hills) pitched the next three innings and Alessi hurled the final inning. Big sluggers in the game against the Hurricanes, all with timely hits (all from Agoura Hills) were Jonathan Fersht and Scott Scherr 3 for 4 and Tyler Rivetti, who knocked in the go-ahead run.

For the championship bracket, teams are re-pooled. The Vipers began this round by losing to the Maryland Orioles, 12-2. Dickman pitched the initial two innings, then Travis Scott (Newbury Park) came in and held the Os for the next five innings.

"Travis came in and gave us a very strong pitching performance," Rivetti said.

Next was a game against the Connecticut Bombers, the state champion. The pitchers locked up in a duel and Agoura lost the game, 3-1.

Viper starter Zack Stiles (Valley Village) gave up three unearned runs and Agoura was unable to beat the Bombers.

"It should have been a 1-0-baseball game," Rivetti said. "Zack pitched the whole game and struck out four."

After that loss, the Vipers were 2-3 in the tourney and the manager said it appeared that the team still had a chance to get into the finals.

"We were still in it," he said. "If we had won the Bomber game, we would have made the final 16. As it was, we finished in the top 20 of 68 teams."

However, it didn’t come out that way and the Vipers’ final game was against the Tri-City, Tenn. Tribe. The game went into extra innings and Agoura won in the ninth inning, 5-4.

"In that last game," the manager said, "we had great pitching performances from Alessi, who pitched the first three innings, Dickman strong in the middle innings and Fersht the final four. Fersht worked himself out of bases loaded jam with no outs."

Norwalk was the top team from California. The tourney winner was the South Florida Lightning, not even a top-ranked team in that state.

Top hitters for Agoura in the National Tournament were Grant Hirneise (Agoura Hills), .357; Chris Auten (Malibu) .353, and Alessi .333, and Drew Norton (Agoura Hills) had a .611 on base percentage.

"Jamie Cipriano (injured during the tourney) only gave us three innings and he’s potentially No. 1 caliber," Rivetti said.

Other players on the Vipers all contributing to the team during the Sarasota tourney were Kevin Brenden, Curtis Courtney and Brandon Quinn from Agoura Hills and Thomas Johnson of Newbury Park.

Assisting Steve Rivetti were coaches Bill Brenden, Paul Johnson, Barry Norton and Tim Scott.