Mesa High school pitcher Jacob Hanna.
The first week of the spring sports year had some notable accomplishments.
One of the biggest was Mesa sophomore Jacob Hanna pitching a perfect game, going the full seven innings, in a 4-0 win over Yuma Gila Ridge in the Adam Donnenfield memorial showcase at Phoenix Brophy Prep.
Coach Mike Masciangelo is happy he heeded his pitching coach’s advice when he approached him in the sixth inning about getting somebody to warm up in the bullpen and Mesa clinging to a 1-0 lead.
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“He said, ‘You don’t want to do that,’ ” Masciangelo said. “I said, ‘Oh,’ and walked away. I was so caught up in trying to win the game, I hadn’t realized what he was doing. I saw they had no hits. I knew he hadn’t walked anybody and we didn’t make an error.”
Hanna got the final batter to strikeout for his fifth of the game. He threw a total of 67 pitches in his first outing of the varsity season.
“When a kid came up to me, I said, ‘Don’t say anything,’ ” Masciangelo said, not to jinx it.
Brues brothers
Chandler Hamilton senior first baseman Nick Brueser, last season’s MaxPreps National Junior Player of the Year, has a little brother who showed off some power in his first varsity at bat.
In a 12-1 win over Mesa Mountain View, freshman third baseman/outfielder Michael Brueser hit a grand slam. Nick hit two home runs in the same game.
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Hamilton won the 6A state championship last season, behind the bat of Nick Brueser, who was azcentral sports’ Big Schools Baseball Player of the Year.
2A track record
Scottsdale Prep’s Weston Wright finished second in the discus in the first invitational of the season, the Richard Thompson South Mountain Classic. But his throw of 172 feet, 7 inches broke a 51-year-old 2A Conference record, according to the Arizona Interscholastic Association’s archives. The previous mark of 165-0 was set in 1966 by Kearny Ray’s Steve Kuykendall.
Phoenix North Canyon senior Austin Jackson, the state’s top 2017 football prospect who signed with USC, won the discus event at South Mountain with a throw of 187 feet.
Suggest human interest stories to Richard Obert at richard.obert@arizonarepublic.com or 602-316-8827. Follow him at azc_obert.
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