The Ceres Blaze 10-and-under travel baseball team delighted its home fans by taking first at the 2022 Pony Baseball Mustang NorCal Super Regional Tournament this past week at Costa Fields.

The Blaze won all four of their games on their way to qualifying for the West Zone Tournament.

“I’m proud of my boys,” head coach David Rubio said. “We expected to be here to be honest. We have a good team.”

Ceres cruised to a 10-2 win against San Francisco Youth Baseball League in the championship game on Sunday.

The Blaze collected 14 hits.

“We felt confident going into the game,” Rubio said. “We expected to win it. We have depth at pitching. All 14 of our kids can hit.”

Ceres ace pitcher Jionni Lawrence totaled six strikeouts in four innings.

“We were saving Jionni for Sunday,” Rubio said. “He’s a big kid. He throws the hardest. He had a solid outing on the mound.”

The Blaze trailed 2-1 after the first inning.

“They had a good team,” Rubio said. “But we weren’t worried. We’ve played in big-pressure games before.”

Relief pitcher Elijah Sosa struck out San Francisco’s final better to end the game.

“All of our kids rushed the mound,” Rubio said while describing Ceres’ post-game celebration.

Ceres earned a hard-fought 6-5 victory while battling Rocklin in the semifinals on Saturday.

The Blaze pulled away for a 17-2 win over Morgan Hill on Thursday.

Ceres scored 17 unanswered runs.

The Blaze continued their run of excellence.

Ceres (10-2) had the second-best record during the TPR spring season.

The Blaze finished first at the Firework Frenzy, staged June 25-26, in Ripon.

Ceres took second in Irvine.

The Blaze are coached by Rubio, Wes Stamper, Lino Toste and Sammy Huerta.

Ceres’ roster consists of 14 players: Lawrence, Brayden Toste, Christian Rubio, Lorenzo Beltran, Liam Stamper, Colton Mahaney, Dominic Rojas, Easton Harman, Elijah Sosa, Gio Garibay, Jose Valenzuela, Leon Huerta, Myles Guernsey and Vander Stice.

“The IQ of these kids from the defensive standpoint is very high for this age group,” coach Rubio said.

The West Zone-NorCal Tournament will be staged, July 21-24, in Los Alamitos.

Eight teams will battle for the title and berth to the World Series.

“We’ve been playing all season to get to this point,” David Rubio said. “We’re beyond excited. We’re going to compete. Pitching is the most important thing in these tournaments. We got depth.”