SARATOGA -- Sitting in his office, West Valley baseball head coach Bobby Hill sat answering questions about the Vikings' recovery from an early deficit against No. 3 Ohlone to take a series in a big spot in conference play. Unbeknownst to him, assistant coach Nicholas Pelster had stolen a baseball sitting on the shelf to his right and scribbled on it, attempting to be discrete while Hill continued beaming over the big victory. Pelster handed the ball to Hill, who stopped and smiled.
"Really?" he asked. Pelster nodded back.
With his 22nd victory of the season, a resounding bounceback W, Hill became the fastest coach in West Valley history to reach 100 victories. After heading to Saratoga by way of Mission College, the former NCAA national champion won a program-best 38 games in 2024, his first year at the helm, and bested that mark with 40 in 2025.
"It's kind of crazy in three years," said Hill. "It's a lot of winning, and I would never, ever expect it. I wasn't expecting it, so it's kind of a shock, but it's kind of cool. [The ball] goes right next to my other ball that has a 100th win for me at Mission. That was my 100th-collegiate win, and it was against Ohlone when I was at Mission. My other 100th win at West Valley is against Ohlone. So it's kind of weird how things work out like that."
The similarities get even a bit more crazy -- in the aforementioned victory over Ohlone on February 26, 2019, a game that Hill's Saints won 13-3, the winning pitcher was Hunter Schilperoort, who played for the Vikings in 2018. Schilperoort threw 8.2 innings without allowing an earned run while scoring twice as the Mission DH. The only home run hit in that game was by Blake Diggle, a left-handed slugger who is now an assistant coach under Hill at West Valley.
Since heading to West Valley, all Hill has done is win and develop four-year talent. His first victory as a Viking was the perfect example of that. In a 2-1 victory over American River on January 26, 2024, in opening day at Valhalla Park, all 11 Vikings to appear have had success at the four-year level, eight of whom played at the Division 1 level. The two runs scored in that game came off the bat of Jayce Dobie, a two-way star and All-Mountain West First Team honoree at Nevada last season. Dillon Haftorson, who started with three innings of one-run ball, has 15 appearances at Lindenwood University. Colin Trizuto, who finished the game with six scoreless innings out of the bullpen, has been a weekend rotation fixture of a Wagner College team with postseason aspirations.
Arguably the most memorable victory under Hill came late in the 2024 season, taking on Folsom Lake in the 2024 NorCal Super Regionals. In a best-of-three series at home, the Vikings dropped a one-run game in the opener before scoring six unanswered in the final two frames of game two in another one-run victory. But the final game saw the Vikings trail by ten in the bottom of the sixth. In what has since become a beacon of the "bend, don't break" philosophy that Hill preaches, the Vikings put up a six-run sixth inning and Kai Laxa, who had come in after an injury to starting shortstop James Bose, hit an opposite-field grand slam to tie the game in the bottom of the eighth. Alan Ramirez's pull-side bomb put the Vikings up 18-17 as they reached the NorCal Regional Final for the first time since 2008.
Over his first two seasons, Hill and his staff sent 24 players to the four-year level, while Nico Wagner was the Vikings' first MLB entry-level draft pick since 2011. This season, both David Estrada (Hawaii) and Sebastian Buller (San Francisco) have committed to continue their athletic and academic careers at the Division 1 level.
With just five games left in the season, Hill took the time to reflect on some of the sophomores, specifically the five who took a redshirt year and have been with him since the beginning at West Valley. David Estrada, Jordan Montez, Eric Altmark, Sebastian Buller and Hunter Olson have all left their mark on the program.
"This is the time of the year for me where the sophomores I've been with a long time, I start counting my days down with them," said Hill, "because I know it's coming to an end. And as a coach, with someone like David, he's got a special place in my heart and he's going to be missed. But I'm going to enjoy the remaining time with them, and just enjoy the special run he's on, both offensively and defensively. I get a connection with these guys that isn't just on the baseball field. It's outside the field, and our relationships that we have outside of here, it goes a little further than them just putting on the West Valley uniform and playing for me. These guys know that they're special to me and when they do leave me, they will be missed. They always have a home and they come back. Now, I find myself going home and putting on the division one games, or games that I know my former players are in, and watching them. It makes me proud. And [these sophomores] are just going to be some more of the guys after this year that are going to know that we're here when they need them. I know a lot of our former guys will call us when they struggle. But those guys, they're family to me, not just baseball players. They're family. I'll give them whatever they need, not just on the baseball field. They are just really great human beings."
West Valley now has five regular season games for Hill to continue adding on to that total, with a culture-defining sophomore class at his disposal to help do so.