Noah Reimer had a game to remember last week.  

The Yucaipa High junior defeated Redlands East Valley 2-1 on the mound on Wednesday, March 8 and knocked in both runs with a sixth-inning single.  

The game-winning hit came with two outs and men on second and third. Reimer lifted a soft liner to right-center that dropped.  

“I just tried to barrel something up for my team,” Reimer said. “It happened to be a little flare, but I’ll take it. I was praying — I was like ‘Go down, go down, go down.’ I felt electric when it dropped in. I just wanted to celebrate with my team.”  

Reimer on the mound was splendid, allowing one run on a balk in the fifth inning, while yielding four hits, and striking out 12 in a complete-game performance.  

“Everything was working today,” Reimer said. “I was locating everything — my fastball, curveball and changeup.”  

Reimer consistently throws in the high 80s.  

“I thought their guy (pitcher Tyler Albanese) did a good job,” Yucaipa coach Ralph Grajeda said. “He throws well, and he did a good job mixing his pitches. He showed that he’s definitely a D1 pitcher and we knew that going in. Noah showed flashes (of dominance) in the fall and in the winter he was dialing it in. We purposely saved Noah for this game. In the PBR tournament he threw a complete-game, four-hitter against Cypress which is ranked 11 or 12 in the state and we only lost 1-0. So I knew when he did that, that we have something. Now’s his time.”  

The game was tied 0-0 and there were two out in the fifth inning when REV’s Dayton Thompson singled off Reimer. Thompson went to third on a single to center by Julian Duran, then scored on a disputed balk.  

Grajeda ran out to the mound area to question the umpire, but his pleas were unsuccessful. One inning later, it was REV coach Chris Paterson in the middle of the field disputing a balk call, also to no avail.  

Isaiah Walz led off for Yucaipa with a single. Wes Hickey sacrificed Walz to second and the balk on Albanese sent Walz to third. Luke Scherrer popped out for the second out and then Daniel Arambula and Trevor Busby walked to load the bases. Reimer then came through with his clutch single.  

REV put a runner on third with one out in the bottom of the seventh inning. But Reimer sandwiched two strikeouts around a walk and celebrated lustily following the last punch-out.   

Reimer and Walz both had two hits for Yucaipa (3-4 overall, 3-0 Citrus Belt League) off Albanese, who yielded five hits and struck out 11. Busby had the other hit.  

Isaac Miller, Korbin Fickett, Thompson, and Duran had hits for REV (2-5 overall, 0-1 CBL).   

“Both of our pitchers threw well,” said REV’s Paterson, speaking of Albanese and reliever Ryan Halamicek. They kept us in the game but we just didn’t get the big hit.”  

Albanese throws in the upper 80s and touches 90 mph occasionally with a good curve ball. He is signed with San Jose State.  

“It was a great baseball game,” Paterson said. “This is like an old CBL game when I played (for REV in the early 2000s). It was two really good teams, playing hard, and it came down to the last pitch of the game.”