Is Eldorado baseball back? The Eagles just might be

From the first day that Ambrose Romero took the job as Eldorado High School’s baseball coach, he’s been speaking about his intent, his desire, to return the Eagles program to the elite status it used to enjoy.

To that end, he had literally been counting the days since Eldorado last hosted a postseason game. The number was close to 3,300 days before it hosted Organ Mountain last weekend.

And, for the first time in a long time, the Eagles most definitely look they've returned.

“I think I can say we’re back,” Romero said. “But obviously, we want to win two more games.”

Eldorado on Thursday twice had to come from behind against No. 4 Cleveland, and it was a three-run top of the seventh that was the difference for the fifth-seeded Eagles in a dramatic 8-7 victory over the Storm in the Class 5A quarterfinals at the Jennifer Riordan Spark Kindness Complex.

“We kept believing,” Romero said. “All year, we’ve been through a lot of things.”

Eldorado will be in the 7 p.m. semifinal Friday against the winner of Thursday’s late quarterfinal between La Cueva and Los Lunas.

Against Cleveland (20-10), the Eagles (22-7) trailed 6-5 starting the seventh.

Tim Kamphuis slapped a double the other way, down the left-field line, to open the rally. Following a walk and fly ball out that advanced Kamphuis to third, Brody Hoffman lined a single to left, scoring Kamphuis to square the game 5-all.

Sophomore Maddox Gonzales followed and rolled a single to right, plating the go-ahead run. Gonzales turned toward his teammates in the dugout and pumped his fists as he ran up the first-base line.

“You know, that hit just reminded me to look at the team, because these guys have picked me up through my ups and downs,” Gonzales said.

There were runners on first and third with one out in the seventh for Eldorado, leading 7-6, when a ground ball to short, which should have easily been an inning-ending double play, was botched on a poor Storm relay throw, and the crucial eighth run scored.

That play loomed large when Cleveland scored a run in the bottom of the seventh on a sacrifice fly. The tying run was stranded at second on a fly ball that ended the game.

“It’s a testament to everybody that the energy was there the whole entire game, even when we were down. We just kept believing. It’s on the boys,” Romero said.

It was back and forth the whole way. Eldorado scored first, Cleveland answered with two in the bottom of the first, Eldorado scored two in the top of the second. The Storm tied it 3-3 with a run in the third.

Eldorado grabbed a 5-3 lead in the fourth, scoring both runs on wild pitches. Cleveland scored one in the fifth and then two in the sixth for that 6-5 edge; the go-ahead run scored on a bases-loaded walk.

But the Eagles dug in and fought back.

“I’ll just say we’ve worked so hard,” Gonzales said. “We woke up at 5 in the morning every day in the fall. We show grit. At the beginning of the season, things weren’t going so well, but our coaches always (tell us to) believe.”