Ninety minutes after edging Narbonne, Valencia came back to the same Corona field and made the nightcap much simpler, beating Paloma Valley 8-2 for a two-win Saturday.

The first inning settled the tone: with two outs, Francisco Velazquez Jr., Tyler Wertz, Evan Conrad, and Ripken Ely strung four straight singles, Ely's a two-run knock, and Zach Davis added a sacrifice fly for a 4-0 lead. Wertz tripled in the third, Davis doubled in the fourth, and in the seventh Ely and Davis singled ahead of Carter Bennett's two-run triple to right, with Rufio Simo's groundout making it 8-2.

Steven Genovese opened with two innings of his hardest stuff on record, 83-87 on the radar, striking out four Wildcats looking. Jordan Ramos bridged three innings with help from a 5-4-3 double play and Wertz's throw to third that erased a runner, and then came the debut: Braden Cianci, the fifteenth Viking to take the mound this fall, worked two scoreless innings around a walk and a single to close out his first game.