Little League: Petaluma Valley Juniors fall to Hawaii, still alive in West tournament

For the Petaluma Valley Little League Juniors All-Stars, Tuesday just wasn’t their day.

Hawaii broke out for five runs in the fifth inning en route to a 10-1 win and a place in the Western U.S. regional championship series up in Bend, Oregon.

It was the Petaluma team’s first loss in four games so far in the tournament.

Despite the loss, PVLL’s season isn’t over yet, as they’ll drop down to the losers’ bracket but keep their hopes of making it to the championship series. It is a task they completed once before, in the Northern California tournament.

The Petaluma team of 12- to 14-year-olds will have to win its next game, then beat Hawaii twice in a row to head to the Junior Little League World Series in Taylor, Michigan.

In Tuesday’s contest, Hawaii got on the board in the first inning with two runs, one of which came on an error. Petaluma uncharacteristically committed five errors on the day.

The NorCal champs weren’t without their chances, however. They loaded the bases in the top of the third and had a runner on in every inning.

“We flipped the table and didn’t get the big hit,” Petaluma head coach Shawn Dooley said. “A couple of miscues in the field and it ended up snowballing on us.”

Their lone run would come in the top of the fifth, when Callaway Haluska scored Carson Lenz on a sacrifice fly. The bottom half of the frame, however, saw Hawaii break out for five runs.

Petaluma Valley will now rematch with Arizona, a team they beat 13-12 in a wild comeback earlier in the tournament, on Wednesday. Arizona beat Nevada 17-5 on Tuesday to advance in the losers’ bracket.

The winner will take on Hawaii in the championship series beginning Thursday, needing to win back-to-back games to head to Michigan.

“We know we have a chance,” Dooley said. “We’ve played Arizona and have seen them, and now we’ve seen Hawaii. We know we can hang with both, and at the end of the day it’s just baseball. Any given day, and our team is talented so we feel we can have a shot.”

You can reach Staff Writer Kienan O’Doherty at 415-887-8650 or kienan.odoherty@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @kodoherty22.