Immediately after winning back-to-back CIF Sac-Joaquin Section championships two weeks ago, the Woodland Christian baseball team shifted its focus to the next challenge: repeating as CIF NorCal champions.

On Tuesday, the Cardinals (28-6, 14-0 Sierra Delta League) continued ascending through another dream postseason run thanks to a 10-1 home win over Durham in the first round of the CIF D4 NorCal Championships.

Junior Jayden Badhesha continued his dominant playoff run with a monster three-run home run to go with eight strikeouts in four innings of light work on the mound.

With the win, the top-seeded Cardinals now advance to the D4 regional semifinals and will host the No. 5-seeded Menlo School on Thursday in what will be a rematch of last year’s D5 title game, which the Cardinals won 3-2.

“We are the defending champions, and our mission is to go back-to-back,” Cardinals head coach Nelson Randolph said. “These guys are resilient; they put in a lot of hard work, and it shows. We work on our craft no matter who we play, and prepare ourselves during practice for the games we play. We knew what we were facing, and that’s why we were successful today.“We are not satisfied, and we want to keep practicing. It’s very exciting to still be in the tournament. It’s a great achievement for our guys and the staff.”

“We did this last year, so we want to keep everything the same and keep our momentum going,” Jayden Badhesha said. “I love playing with these seniors, so it’s cool we are playing so close to graduation.”

After running the table during the CIF SJS D6 tournament, eventually defeating No. 1-overall seed Bear River on May 20 at Sacramento City College, the Cardinals were graciously awarded the No. 1 seed in the D4 regional tournament.

The No. 8-seeded Durham came into the matchup as champions as well, winning the 2025 CIF Northern Section D4 championship after defeating No. 1 seed Winters 13-5 back on Saturday, May 24. Before that title win, Durham defeated No. 3 seed University Prep 5-4 in the semifinal and No. 7 seed Paradise by the score of 10-3 in the opening round.

The Cardinals got off to their customary fast start and eventually loaded up the bases in the bottom of the first inning for junior Armaan Badhesha. Badhesha came through with runners in scoring position and singled to left, scoring junior Jordan Villanueva and senior Jandro Torres to make it 2-0.

After Jayden Badhesha struck out the side in the top of the second, the Cardinals matched their output from the first inning and made it 4-0 in the bottom of the second. Gary Mann would kick off the inning by scoring on a wild pitch from third base before Jayden singled a line drive to left to score Villanueva.

In the bottom of the third, the Cardinals made it 5-0 on a double steal attempt that resulted in Mann successfully swiping second base and Parker Howald stealing home.

After Jayden Badhesha racked up his seventh and eighth strikeouts in the top of the fourth, the Cardinals finished off Durham with five game-ending runs in the bottom half to enact the 10-run mercy rule.

How did they do it?

Well, Badhesha’s three-run bomb to right, scoring Villanueva and senior Jeffrey Nannini, made it 8-0. Then, Torres would double, steal third base, and eventually score to make it 9-0 on a sacrifice fly to left field courtesy of Armaan Badhesha.

Armaan would finish the game with 3 RBI on a hit and another great shift behind the plate. Torres finished with a hit, and 2 runs scored. Nannini had a run, a hit, and a walk.

With one run away from the mercy rule and plenty of things to do after the game, the Cardinals got to work on ending the game early. Senior Owen Tessier found a way to reach base safely on an error before then making Durham pay by terrorizing the basepaths via two straight steals to end up at third base.

Howald then came up as the hero with a sacrifice fly to right, easily scoring Tessier from third to make it 10-0. Tesseir finished the game with a run and a hit, while Howald had a run.

Howald then came out to slam the door shut with the final inning of relief.

The Cardinals will host Menlo on Thursday, back at Trafican Field with the first pitch set for 5 p.m.

“I want us to come in hungry,” Randolph said. “We are not going to be complacent whatsoever.”

“I think we need to just keep up the defense and pitching,” Jayden said. “We came out early with our hitting today, so we need to keep that going.”