Heian batters bunted home a pair of runs and made the most of their five hits Friday to lead the Kyoto school 3-1 over Ishikawa's Kanazawa and into the quarterfinals of the high school baseball national championship tourney.
Heian ace Yuta Takahashi overcame a shaky second inning, when he gave up a run on three hits at Koshien Stadium, to shut Kanazawa out the rest of the way on four hits.
Heian, which advances to the quarterfinals for the first time since finishing as runnerup in 1997, will face Omi high school from neighboring Shiga Prefecture.
Omi took advantage of Yoichi Hasegawa's rough day on the mound to score seven runs in the second inning and then cruise to an 11-1 triumph over Nagano's Tsukahara Seiun.
In the third game, Tadasuke Ikeda curled a two-run homer around the right-field foul pole in the eighth inning to lift Aomori's Kosei Gakuin 3-2 over Kanzaki of Saga Prefecture. In the day's final match-up, southpaw Futoshi Hatakeyama pitched a four-hit shutout and struck out 11 as Yokohama of Kanagawa Prefecture rolled 5-0 over Kumamoto's Shugakukan.