San Diego County has waited 67 years to claim a community college state baseball champion.

So what was one more game?

Grossmont College became the first San Diego-area team to earn a state title, beating defending champ Santa Rosa 10-6 Monday afternoon in a winner-take-all game for the California Community College Athletic Association state crown. The celebration was delayed after Santa Rosa forced the finale by beating the Griffins 5-4 earlier in the day.

“It feels amazing,” Grossmont coach Randy Abshier said by phone. “You’ve got Granite Hills guys, La Jolla guys, Patrick Henry guys. It’s a San Diego effort that won this for us today. It just goes to the caliber of baseball that’s in San Diego ...


“We’re very excited to be the first one to do it. With all the great baseball that’s come through the community colleges in San Diego, it’s an honor to do this for those who have come before all these kids.”

Credit the end of the long title drought in no small part also to a guy who grew up just north of San Diego County and has been playing college baseball for less than a year.

Grossmont freshman right-hander Hayden Shenefield graduated from El Camino Real High in 2013. He spent the past four years as a business student at San Diego State — earning his degree, in fact, just two weeks ago. Shenefield was playing in an adult baseball league when he approached Abshier late last summer about joining the team.

Shenefield told Abshier: “I pitch adult ball. It doesn’t mean very much, but will you just give me an opportunity?”


“He started out in the bullpen for most of the season,” Abshier said. “It was the San Diego City series where I had to make a change with one of my starters. He struck out 16 hitters in that game and never looked back.”

All Shenefield did over the weekend at Fresno City College was have a hand in each Grossmont victory. He pitched the ninth inning for the save in Saturday’s 5-4 win over Ohlone, pitched a six-hit shutout in Sunday’s 3-0 win over Santa Rosa, and then closed out the last two innings in Monday’s clincher against the Bear Cubs.

Shenefield threw 117 pitches on Sunday, but that didn’t stop him from approaching Abshier in the dugout in the sixth inning and saying, “I want the ball, Coach, and I will win this for us.”

“And he did,” Abshier said. “That’s the type of kid he is. He’s real quiet. Real smart. But on the field, he is just a beast.”


The right-hander was chosen as tournament MVP after allowing just one run over 12 innings in the series. Shenefield, who took online classes at Grossmont, fit right in with this group.

“We were underdogs from the beginning, and a lot of people said we shouldn’t even be in this tournament to begin with,” Shenefield said in a postgame online interview. “I just came out with the same approach I’d been doing since I got my first start in the middle of the year — just throw strikes and get people out.”

Abshier said he now is fielding calls from both Division I and Division II schools that want to offer Shenefield graduate school scholarships.

“He’s a strike-thrower, and at this level, if you’re a strike-thrower at each side of the plate, you’re going to win, and that’s what he did,” Abshier said.


The Grossmont offense put Shenefield in position to do what he did.

Griffins first baseman Noah Strohl, a San Diego State commitment from La Jolla High, got things going in the final game with a two-run homer in the third inning. Strohl added a pair of run-scoring doubles in the seventh and eighth, giving him a game-high four RBIs.

It seemed that would be plenty when the Griffins (39-8-1) built a 6-2 lead in the seventh, but Santa Rosa (38-11) rallied in the bottom of the inning to make it a game.

Santa Rosa had forced the winner-take-all contest when the Bear Cubs scored twice late for a one-run win in the morning game. The decisive run came against Grossmont reliever Javier De La Torre, who would get an opportunity for redemption four hours later.


De La Torre snuffed a seventh-inning rally with an inning-ending strikeout, stranding the potential tying and go-ahead runs on base after Santa Rosa had scored three times to close a four-run deficit to 6-5.

Grossmont DH Robert Bostedt restored the earlier lead in the eighth, collecting three RBIs with a bases-loaded double. Strohl’s second double completed the scoring.

That left it to Shenefield, who finally allowed a run in the ninth before striking out Santa Rosa’s Josh Lenney to end the game.

This was Grossmont’s first trip to the state championship. The closest a San Diego-area team had come to winning a state title was runner-up finishes by Southwestern (2008), Palomar (2005) and San Diego City (1974, 1959, 1957).


“They had a want to win that I’ve never, ever seen,” said Abshier, who noted early on with his staff this season that “we’re not going to lose. These guys won’t let us lose. That showed in the second game today, and it really does come down to the character of our kids.”

2017 California Community College Athletic Association State Championship

at Fresno City College

Saturday

Game No. 1 — Santa Rosa 5, El Camino 2


Game No. 2 — Grossmont 4, Ohlone 3

Sunday

Game No. 3 — El Camino 6, Ohlone 1 (Ohlone eliminated)

Game No. 4 — Grossmont 3, Santa Rosa 0


Game No. 5 — Santa Rosa 8, El Camino 5 (10 inn., El Camino eliminated)

Monday

Game No. 6 — Santa Rosa 5, Grossmont 4

Game No. 7 — Grossmont 10, Santa Rosa 6 (Griffins win state title)


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kirk.kenney@sduniontribune.com / on Twitter: @sdutkirKDKenney