The long run by the Rancho Alamitos High School baseball team into the CIF playoffs ended Friday with a 12-2 loss to Gahr in the Division Three quarterfinals.
Rancho led briefly, 1-0 in the top of the third, but fell behind when the Gladiators pushed across four runs against Vaquero ace Justin Zielinski (7-2). The green-and-gold cut the margin to 4-2 in the fourth, but the home team widened the margin and drove Zielinski off the mound with three runs in the fifth.
Two other Rancho hurlers couldn’t do much better, yielding five more runs in the bottom of the sixth. The Vaqs only collected three hits in the game while Gahr had 14.
The loss finished the Garden Grove League champions’ season with a 21-5-2 record.
