OLYMPIC LEAGUE BASEBALL: Cardenas roughed up early as Valley Christian falls to Heritage Christian

April 28, 2026

By Loren Kopff • @LorenKopff on X

Before the first pitch was thrown, all the cards seemed to be in favor of Valley Christian High as it hosted Heritage Christian High last Thursday. The Defenders were sending junior John Cardenas to the mound, making his seventh start in eight appearances and hoping to remain undefeated.

Cardenas had not allowed a first inning run in any of his starts and was hoping to give the Defenders a season-series win over the Warriors as Olympic League-leading Maranatha High awaits this week. But Cardenas threw 30 pitches in the top of the first inning, allowed three hits and three runs and the Warriors held on late for a 6-4 victory. The Defenders began the final week of league action tied with Heritage Christian for second place and two games behind Maranatha with three to go.

“He kept his pitches up a little bit; [Heritage Christian] got a couple of two-strike hits that didn’t make his best pitch, which led to the baserunners,” said V.C. head coach Eric Slater of his star pitcher. “This is a good team; they compete and they’re solid up and down the lineup. They’re doing their best job to get baserunners on, and they did that in the first couple of innings.”

On the fourth pitch of the game, Nicholas Boldt singled to right field and on the next pitch, Cardenas hit Colter Hirtensteiner. Two batters later, a double from Crosby Hirtensteiner brought in Boldt and now with two outs, an infield hit from Robert Pettijohn made it 2-0. That was followed by a one-strike single from Ian Patterson and a base hit to left from Josh Park on a 2-2 count to load the bases before Cardenas struck out Isaac Patterson.

After Cardenas got Boldt to hit a comebacker to him to lead off the second, Colter Hirtensteiner, who would make it 4-0 on a wild pitch, and Christian Boldt each singled and Noah Arreola doubled with two outs to plate Boldt.

After that, Cardenas settled down and threw 54 pitches until he was lifted with one out in the seventh.  He ended the game by allowing a season-high 11 hits and six hits, striking out three and releasing 94 pitches. He did get to at least the sixth inning for the fourth time this season.

“The great part about that though is to see the resilience of John to settle down and then really start pitching pretty well after a couple tough innings for himself,” said Slater. “He settled down and kept the ball down. That’s the difference. When the ball stays down for him, he’s going to be effective, and he became a lot more efficient in those last few innings.”

V.C. had opportunities to get on the board in the first few innings but came away empty. With two outs in the first, senior shortstop Lucas Witt singled but was out at second on a fielder’s choice from junior catcher Mack Lynott. Then with one out in the second, Crosby Hirtensteiner walked junior first baseman Brody Beck, who moved to second on a two-out single from junior right fielder Lincoln Slater. After both runners stole their respective bases, sophomore third baseman Hunter Deeble was caught looking at a third strike.

The Defenders (15-7, 6-3) got on the board in the third when junior center fielder Quintin Ekstrom, Witt and Lynott all singled on the first pitch they saw from Hirtensteiner with one out. Senior left fielder Max Douglas hit a sacrifice fly to bring home Ekstrom, but another strikeout ended further scoring.

V.C. got its second run in the sixth when Beck singled with one out and was replaced by junior pinch runner Luke Gisler who made it 5-2 on Deeble’s two-out single. The Warriors would tack on their last run in the seventh, but the hosts sent eight to the plate in their half of the inning and had the winning run come up to bat.

With one out, Witt doubled down the left field line and Lynott singled before a base hit from Douglas scored Witt. One out later, senior designated hitter Cole Hefner singled to load the bases and a walk to Lincoln Slater allowed Lynott to score. Two pitches later, a fly out ended the game the ended any chance for the Defenders to win the all-important season series with Heritage Christian and move a game closer to Maranatha.

“They do a lot of things well,” said Eric Slater of Heritage Christian. “They have a lot of bat control; they keep the ball out of the air, they put the ball in play a lot and then today, what happened was nothing different from the last two times they played us. It’s just today, their hitting just found those right spots against us. The same thing could have happened in game two. Luckily in game two, those ground balls were hit to our guys.

“We just didn’t quite get the big hit that we needed,” he later said. “And that’s baseball; you can’t do it all the time, and we’ve done it a lot this year. I like these moments. I hate losing, but I like these moments because it trains your team to be competitive in these types of ballgames.”

On Apr. 20, Heritage Christian scored in the bottom of the sixth to edge the Defenders 4-3, but the next day, V.C. scored four times in the top of the third and posted a 6-2 victory.

Before the loss to begin the week, the Defenders had won 18 straight games over Heritage Christian. They have won 43 of the past 60 meetings against the Warriors and the 43 wins are the most against any opponent. Meanwhile, Maranatha has been on top of the league since 2018, winning 83 of its 89 league contests, including this season. Of the six league losses over the past eight seasons, four have been to V.C. Maranatha did lose to Heritage Christian earlier this season.

Any chance of the Defenders (15-8, 6-4) winning the league were quickly dashed as Maranatha won 19-6 this past Tuesday. The middle game with the Minutemen, which is also the last home game of the regular season for the Defenders, is on Apr. 30 with the regular season finale on Friday.

“The bottom line is that we look at every single game at that particular moment,” said Eric Slater. “Now obviously you have to plan in advance for these long series and stuff like that. But it really is the same type of motto that’s been around for a long time-one game at a time. If we’re focused on playing one game at a time, we’ll let the cards fall where they’re at.”