Central Valley High School's varsity baseball team faced a challenging task last week.

The Hawks dropped to 9-10-2 on the year and 1-5 in the WAC standings after losing twice by a combined score of 24-5 to El Capitan.

The first-place Gauchos improved to 14-6-0 and 7-1.

"Both of their pitchers were really good," Central Valley head coach Derrick Goblirsch said. "We didn't play very good defense. We had a lot of errors. We just didn't help ourselves out."

The Hawks lost 9-0 to the Gauchos on Thursday in Ceres.

El Capitan's Sai Davuluri allowed just two hits with 15 strikeouts and no walks in seven innings.

Central Valley's Robert Nieto singled twice.

The Hawks committed six errors on defense.

"He's the best pitcher we've seen this year," Goblirsch said. "He had good velocity. The biggest thing was he had two off-speed pitches. He threw a lot of strikes as well."

The Hawks totaled six errors in losing 15-5 in five innings to the Gauchos on Wednesday in Ceres.

El Capitan scored one run in the bottom of the first inning, four in the second, six in the third and four in the fifth.

"It wasn't really competitive," Goblirsch said. "They jumped on us early. We weren't really focused. That led to a lot of errors."

Central Valley collected four hits on offense.

Sophomore Carlos Rodriguez batted 1-for-3 with one RBI and one run.

Leandro Mercado batted 1-for-2 with one RBI and one run.

Moses Ghiorso batted 1-for-2 with one RBI.

Mikie Lopez batted 1-for-2 with one run.

Johnny Pittman and Adrian Perez both scored once.

Central Valley will play second-place Patterson (5-1) twice this week.

The Hawks will host the Tigers today and compete at Patterson on Friday.

Both WAC games will begin at 4 p.m.

"Our league is tough this year," Goblirsch stated. "There's no drop off."