At the plate and on the mound, Andrew Heideman and Casey Bloomquist provided quite the 1-2 punch for the Bakersfield Christian High School baseball team on Tuesday.

Powered by the pair's multi-faceted exploits, the seconded-seeded Eagles earned a third straight section championship game appearance by beating visiting Fowler 5-3.

Cal State Bakersfield pitcher Spenser Messmore was on his game Tuesday night.

And it helped that Cal State Northridge's pitching had a nightmare game.

VISALIA -- Devin Lohman hit two homers and drove in six runs and Juan Duran had two doubles and four RBIs Tuesday to lead the Bakersfield Blaze to a 14-6 California League baseball victory over the Visalia Rawhide at Rawhide Ballpark.

The Blaze amassed 19 hits, with Billy Hamilton, Loman, Travis Mattair and Duran collecting three hits apiece. Hamilton, Lohman and Mattair also scored three runs apiece. Hamilton swiped two more bases to run his league-leading total to 42.

Baseball

Central Section semifinals

Bakersfield's Jake Varner will be among a group of U.S. Olympian wrestlers who will take on Russian wrestlers in New York's Times Square next month.

It's a repeat of "The Grapple in the Big Apple" from last year, when the U.S. defeated Russia 5-2 in a world-class freestyle dual meet.

David Higdon, managing partner of the Jam, has been named Executive of the Year for the NBA D-League.

Higdon, 43, oversees the day-to-day operations of Bakersfield's D-League franchise.

TAFT -- Add P.J. Carmichael to the list of those who believe ignorance is bliss.

The Centennial senior, having just been told that he needed a birdie to get into a playoff with Clovis West's James Trevino for the Central Section golf championship Monday, had a chance for that tie from just five feet.

Even though she's a cousin of Bakersfield's own NFL star, Joey Porter, Golden Valley senior Jamara Scott has spent her career somewhat in the shadows.

She has qualified for the CIF State Track and Field Championships in five different instances -- but none of them came via section championships.

VISALIA -- Chad Rogers pitched seven scoreless innings, and Donald Lutz and Travis Mattair provided solo homers in the ninth inning of a 6-4 California League baseball victory over the Visalia Rawhide.

Bakersfield opened a 2-0 lead in the first inning on doubles by Billy Hamilton, Lutz and Mattair.

Camps

Soccer: (3 times a week), ages 11-12 from 9-11 a.m.; Ages 13-16, 10 a.m.-noon. Coach is Myka Peck of Garces High. Call (661) 410-3343. Starts June 4.

Kern County track and field athletes stole the spotlight May 12 in Kingsburg, winning more than half the events in the Valley Track and Field Championships.

Six counties competed in the the meet, which included 124 events. Kern County athletes won 65 of those events.

Several weekends ago my team traveled to Fresno to bowl the California United States Bowling Congress Women's State tournament.

Returning home with teammate Sheilah Bomar, we talked about how much the Team house, Cedar Lanes, felt like Regency Lanes here in Bakersfield. Sheilah even remarked: "They have a Marge AND an Al (referring to the late Marge Langdon, manager, and the late Al Cichy, head lane mechanic of Regency)!" Cedar's "Marge and Al" are manager Joanne Christian (24 years) and lane mechanic Al Bartz (22 years).

IRVINE -- Kevin Younger went 4-for-5 with two RBIs, but UC Irvine defeated Cal State Bakersfield 15-6 at Anteaters Ballpark to take the rubber game of the three-game series Sunday.

DC Legg's two-RBI single in the top of the first highlighted a three-run CSUB first inning. After being held without a hit over the first three innings by Roadrunner starter Jeff McKenzie, the Anteaters (30-22) tied the score in the fourth with a three-run spurt of their own.

LOS ANGLES -- Eight months after breaking his leg in a training accident, Dutchman Robert Gesink sealed his overall race title Sunday with a main field finish in the eighth stage of the Amgen Tour of California.

Peter Sagan of Slovakia won the final leg. The 22-year-old Sagan claimed the 42.6-mile road race from Beverly Hills to downtown Los Angeles with a late burst to take his fifth win of the eight-stage event.

In Germany, there is no MLB Network, no ESPN web gems, and you can't just click on the television at the end of the day to catch the nightly baseball scores.

So it's no surprise that Donald Lutz didn't know much about America's favorite pastime growing up, except for the small faded posters his older brother Sascha possessed of various players from baseball's chase for the home run record era.

Cypress College won its third straight softball state championship with a pair of victories Sunday over College of the Siskiyous at the Dean & Adah Gay Sports Complex.

The Chargers (45-5) won three straight elimination games after losing 8-3 to Siskiyous on Saturday.

CLOVIS -- There's nothing like the Central Section Swimming and Diving Championships to bring out the best from Frontier High sophomore Jorie Caneta.

For the second sonsecutive year, Caneta set a section record in winning the girls' 100-yard breaststroke. Her time of 1:04.43 dominated the field and easily topped her previous best of 1:04.94, set in this meet one year earlier. In a race often won by hundredths of a second, Caneta beat runner-up Haley Washburn of Sanger (1:08.41) by nearly four seconds.

CLOVIS -- It's almost like Matt Sewell and Anthony Busacca could tell the future.

A year ago, after both bowed out in the Central Section individual championships, they told each other they'd team up and win the doubles title in 2012. The vision came true Saturday at Buchanan High, where Busacca, a sophomore at Liberty High, and Sewell, a senior, took down an upstart Stockdale team of John Matthew Flores and Charles Tamer, 6-1, 6-2 in the section championship.

Division I Championships

At Clovis West

Baseball is a simple game ... score more runs than your opponent.

But if that is the case then why is it so hard to play? Why do so many people have such a visceral passion for the game, yet haven't played in years?