Costa Stars Still Competing - Against Each Other

After its fantastic baseball season, Mira Costa High was represented on Friday by six players in the South Bay Athletic Club's All-Star game, in which teammates were pitted against each other and rivals played side by side.

Mustangs' pitcher Drew Van Orden, shortstop Kyle Demarco and first baseman Jake Jelmini were on the Blue Team, which won the nine-inning game played at Redondo Union High 5-4. Catcher Jackson Morrow, pitcher Robert Parucha and right fielder Lucas Whitehill were on the Red Team.

"It's fun to play a game like this, kind of low stress. But there are a lot of good players and everyone is a competitor and they are all trying to win this game," Morrow said.

That made for some interesting competition on a night of goodbyes and hellos for the 42 high school seniors from 18 South Bay schools - goodbye to their high school careers, hello to fellow all-stars that they have competed against for the past four years.

With Van Orden and Parucha on the mound on opposite sides, it was inevitable they would match up against their Mira Costa teammates.

Morrow got a chance to bat against Van Orden, who had an ERA of 2.07 with 68 strikeouts in 61 innings in his senior season and is headed in the fall to Duke.

"I really got into it,'' Morrow said. ''You can't let Drew strike you out. We had a little bet before the game, but we called it a draw. I flied out but I got the RBI.''

When Parucha was on the mound, he got to face Demarco.

"I K'd him. I blew 3 fast balls by him. It was great," said Parucha, who had a stretch in a fantastic senior season in which he allowed only eight hits and no runs over 17 innings in victories over West, Leuzinger and Palos Verdes Peninsula.

Demarco wasn't as happy. "I like to end with a W, that's all I have to say about that,'' he said. ''I like to win against my teammates. Robert struck me out - that pissed me off a little bit. It was a good win and I like to go out a winner.''

Demarco said they were battling all day long. Parucha won when they were playing the ''MLB The Show'' video game, but Demarco took him out in a wrestling match. Parucha took the tiebreaker with the strikeout.

Jelmini, who led the Mustangs with a .417 batting average, was not able to play in the game, his jaw still wired shut after it was broken in two places during a batting practice accident the week before Mira Costa opened the CIF-Southern Section Division II playoffs.

Whitehill, who set the school single-season home run record with nine and also was one of the Mustangs' best pitchers, said that he really enjoyed playing with the guys from other schools - "It was fun game and we got to meet a lot of new people, see guys from all over the area. That pitcher from Torrance, (Josh Mingura) was really good.''

He will be attending Brown in the fall and is looking forward to the move to the East Coast. ''I'm going to have to bring a lot of jackets and sweaters though,'' he said.

It was quite a year for the Mustangs, especially Demarco and Morrow, who starred on a football team that won a CIF-SS Western Division Championship in the fall.

"Winning CIF was the biggest accomplishment I have ever had in my sporting career,'' Demarco said. ''The baseball season was great and football was awesome. I'll remember both of them for the rest of my life. But walking around with the CIF ring for football is really cool."