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Verdugo Hills, the fourth-place finisher in the Valley Mission League with a 10-18 record entering the City Section Division I playoffs, completed a remarkable turnaround on Saturday, winning its fourth consecutive playoff game to take home the Division I title with a 3-1 victory over Taft at Dodger Stadium.

No one was picking the Dons in this one. They had used their two best pitchers in a 10-inning semifinal win over top-seeded Sylmar. But coach Angel Espindola had a plan.

“I’ve got tricks up my sleeve,” he said.

Anthony Velasquez threw a complete-game one-hitter while relying on his defense to make the routine plays and deal with six walks and only one strikeout. At the plate, the hero was first baseman Cutlor Fannon. He had an RBI double in the first inning and an RBI single in the seventh.

But there was drama in the bottom of the seventh inning. The Toreadors’ Victor Jara represented the tying run at the plate with two outs. He hit probably the hardest ball of the day to deep left field.

“The last one scared me,” Velasquez said as he watched left fielder Moises Rodriguez stick out his glove running to catch it and start a victory celebration.

Rodriguez said he “felt all my emotions running through me” as he chased down the fly ball.

“It was surreal,” he said.

Verdugo Hills pitcher Anthony Velasquez threw a complete game in 3-1 win over Taft at Dodger Stadium.

(Craig Weston / For The Times)

Espindola’s best coaching moment came in the bottom of the sixth inning. Taft drew consecutive walks from Velasquez with one out. Espindola went to the mound for a pitcher conference.

“Relax,” is what he told Velasquez.

Then Taft hit into an inning-ending double play.

Verdugo Hills’ fielders more than handled the Dodger Stadium environment. Catcher Miguel Wong threw out a runner trying to steal second. Outfielders Rodriguez, Jack Iafrate and Jessie Olmos combined to catch seven fly balls. And third baseman D’Angelo Duran and shortstop Ethan Sanchez were flawless on ground balls.

As for what happened in the playoffs, Rodriguez said, “We changed our perspective to playing baseball instead of doing baseball. It was let’s have fun.”

CITY SECTION BASEBALL PLAYOFFS

WEDNESDAY’S RESULTS

Semifinals

At Cal State Northridge

OPEN DIVISION

#2 El Camino Real 4, #8 Granada Hills 3

#1 Birmingham 4, #4 Carson 1

At Stengel Field

DIVISION I

#10 Taft 2, #3 Venice 0

#13 Verdugo Hills 2, #1 Sylmar 1

FRIDAY’S SCHEDULE

FINALS

At East LA College

DIVISION II

#6 South East vs. #5 LA Roosevelt, 5:30 p.m.

At Fremont

DIVISION III

#9 LA Hamilton vs. #7 Fremont, 2:30 p.m.

SATURDAY’S SCHEDULE

FINALS

At Dodger Stadium

OPEN DIVISION

#2 El Camino Real vs. #1 Birmingham, 1 p.m.

DIVISION I

#10 Taft vs. #1 Verdugo Hills

It’s now official. You can call Chatsworth a 12-time City Section volleyball champion after the Chancellors won the Open Division championship on Saturday night, knocking off West Valley League rival Granada Hills 24-26, 25-21, 25-14, 25-18.

Noa Beauregard led Chatsworth with 14 kills and Grant Chang had 13.

Coach Sina Aghassy got his team to settle down and dominate the Highlanders after their first-set defeat. The two teams had split their league matches.

Both schools will move on to the state tournament next week, with pairings announced on Sunday.

Baseball

Sylmar 4, Chatsworth 3: The No. 1-seeded Spartans survived a three-run seventh inning by Chatsworth to advance to the City Section Division I semifinals against Verdugo Hills on Wednesday at Stengel Field. Tim Sepulveda had two hits.

Verdugo Hills 8, Sun Valley Poly 2: Jered Smith hit a grand slam in the sixth inning to help the Dons reach the City Division I semifinals.

Taft 11, Cleveland 0: The Toreadors advanced to the Division I semifinal behind Sebastian Gamez, who threw the shutout. Nate Swinson had two hits and two RBIs.

Venice 7, Palisades 6: The Gondoliers earned a match against Taft in the Division I semifinals. Darius Basco’s sacrifice fly in the bottom of the seventh won it. Miguel Medina threw three scoreless innings of relief.

Softball

La Habra 6, Murrieta Mesa 4: Rylee Gruener hit a grand slam during a five-run inning to enable La Habra to eliminate top-seeded Murrieta Mesa in the Division I playoffs. Alyssa Hernandez added three hits.

Orange Lutheran 17, Chino Hills 14: In a wild Division 1 playoff game, Sierra Nichols and Madelyn Armendariz each had four hits for Orange Lutheran, with Armendariz getting three doubles. Nichols, Rylee Silva and Eliza Johnson hit home runs. Brett Lambrecht had five RBIs for Chino Hills.

Sherman Oaks Notre Dame 8, Oaks Christian 5: The Mission League champions advanced behind freshman pitcher Ainsley Jenkins, who came in and provided three innings of three-hit relief pitching. Nadia Ledon, Keira Luderer and Ellayne Tellez-Perez hit home runs.

Norco 8, Riverside Poly 2: The No. 2-seeded Cougars were led by Savannah Gonzalez, who had three hits, including a home run. Coral Williams struck out 13. Camryn May and Sadie Burroughs also had three hits.

It’s time for Mira Costa to try to wipe away the disappointing memory from last season’s Southern Section Division 1 girls’ beach volleyball final, where the Mustangs lost to Redondo Union 3-2.

Mira Costa faces JSerra at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at Long Beach City College in this season’s championship game.

Key returnees for Mira Costa are Lily Vandeweghe, Lily Enfield, Harper Terry and Izzy Elston.

JSerra has succeeded in breaking up the Mira Costa-Redondo Union beach volleyball domination. Those teams had met in the final for the previous three years.

The Mustangs swept San Marcos 5-0 in the semifinals on Thursday. JSerra eliminated No. 2-seeded Redondo Union 3-2.

Venice won the City Section title over Taft on Friday.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com

Make it 17 and counting.

That is how many boys’ tennis titles Palisades has won in a row after its 18.5 to 11 victory over Taft in the City Section Open Division championship match Wednesday afternoon at Balboa Sports Center in Encino.

Freshman Kensho Ford, who reached the CIF singles semifinals at the Ojai tournament four days earlier, swept his four sets at No. 1 as expected — dropping a total of three games in the process — but what co-coaches Robert Silvers and Bud Kling did not anticipate was Zach Cohen sweeping at No. 4 to give the top-seeded Dolphins a split of the 16 possible singles points.

Cohen played No. 1 doubles with Zach Stuffman all season but was itching to play singles for the playoffs and wound up winning all six of his sets including two before being subbed out for the last two rotations in Monday’s semifinal rout of fourth-seeded Marshall.

“I’ve been asking for two years now and when Coach Rob told me Saturday I’d be in singles I was so excited,” said Cohen, who was also the Division I individual champion while pacing the Dolphins to their fifth straight cross-country team title in November at Elysian Park.

Five is nice, but 17 straight is a dynasty unparalleled in City Section history. No team in any sport from a City school has ever produced a longer streak and no coach has more City crowns than Kling’s 55 (33 boys, 22 girls). Palisades has also appeared in 21 straight finals. The last time two other schools met for the City’s upper division title was 2004 when El Camino Real defeated West Valley League rival Granada Hills.

Palisades got another surprise when the sophomore tandem of Josh Glaser and Bennett Murphy, who were bumped up to varsity a month earlier, won all three of ithebsets at No. 3 doubles, beating the Toreadors’ top two duos in tiebreakers.

Taft’s Dannes Djalilov won two sets at No. 1 singles during Wednesday’s City Section Open Division tennis final.

(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)

Danees Djalilov took two of his four sets at No. 1 singles and Brandon Celestine did the same at No. 4 for the second-seeded Toreadors, who were the last team to defeat Palisades in the finals — doing so in 2007 and 2008 led by two-time City individual singles winner Josh Tchan.

Moments after Ford finished off his 6-0 victory over Alec Volodarskiy to move his team within half a point of the championship, Stuffman and new partner Jack Plotkowski put the Dolphins over the 15-point threshold by completing a sweep at No. 1 doubles with a 6-2 ousting of Taft’s No. 2 team.

Taft was seeking its eighth City title and first since winning Division II in 2019.