BENICIA HIGH’S varsity baseball team wrapped up the Solano County Athletic Conference championship with a Senior Day victory over American Canyon.

It was a rather bumpy road getting there, but Benicia High’s varsity baseball team safely reached its first destination on Senior Day against visiting American Canyon.

Pitchers Cole Eigenhuis and Anthony Lopez combined for a shutout as Benicia beat the Wolves, 6-0, on Tuesday to secure the Solano County Athletic Conference championship. It was Benicia’s ninth SCAC title in 13 tries and the program’s 22nd league championship since 1950. It was also the 11th league title in 16 tries for manager Jim Bowles.

“We’re going to enjoy this one,” said senior Riley Pitkin, who scored a run Tuesday.

The Panthers went 3-9 against non-league competition but are a lofty 11-3 in the SCAC, one game ahead of Vanden with one game remaining in the regular season. Benicia (14-12) has already clinched a tiebreaker over Vanden and earned the SCAC’s No. 1 seed for the upcoming Sac-Joaquin Section playoffs.

“It’s been a bumpy road and we overcame the odds,” said Lopez, who pitched his way out of a bases-loaded jam in the seventh inning and earned his third save of the season. “We never gave up on ourselves. We went out there every day working hard and trying to get better.”

“We had a really rough start and a lot of people didn’t expect it from us,” Pitkin said of Benicia’s title run. “But we played well together and we enjoy being together and it paid off for us. We understood that it was a difficult road but we believed in the process, people stepped up when guys went down and we played aggressively.”

“It would have been easy for us to lose our patience this year but guys stayed focused on the goal and kept fighting,” Bowles said. “This is a blue-collar team that gets their nose in the dirt and I’m so proud of them.”

Makoa Copp singled home Xian Covington-Hunt to get Benicia started in the third inning and Covington-Hunt added a two-run single in the fourth for a 3-0 lead. Joey Daini drove in Jared Jackson with a single in the fifth, Steve Urias scored on an error in the sixth and Josiah Peterson made it 6-0 when he scored on a ground out.

Eigenhuis went six shutout innings and pitched his way out of bases-loaded jams in the fourth and sixth innings. The junior scattered five hits, walked five and struck out nine.

“Talk about a big-game pitcher,” Bowles said of Eigenhuis, who improved to 6-1 on the season. “Cole’s still a little rough around the edges and pitches himself into jams, but he’s really good at pitching himself out of them. Once he learns to fully control that big frame of his, he’s going to be a good one.”

Benicia concludes the regular season Wednesday at American Canyon. Though the Panthers have already clinched the SCAC title and a No. 1 seed, they don’t want to slow down now.

“You never like to go into the playoffs on a losing streak and we don’t want to share the league championship,” Bowles said. “We can’t afford to take any days off and we’re going to play that game to win.”

“Our goal is a Section championship,” Pitkin said. “That’s what we’re pushing toward and hopefully things work out for us.”

“We want the Section championship,” Lopez said. “I believe we have what it takes to win it.”

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