Hotoku Gakuen catcher Kei Arahata hit a solo homer in the seventh inning Saturday to lift the Hyogo Prefecture school to a 3-2 victory over Tokyo's Nichidai Daisan in the 74th national high school baseball invitational tournament.
Hotoku Gakuen ace Tomohisa Otani spotted Nichidai Daisan two runs in the first inning at Koshien Stadium, but the pre-tourney favorites came back with single runs in the fourth and fifth innings to set up Arahata's game-winning shot to the left field stands.
Otani, who notched eight strikeouts, held the winners of last summer's national championship crown scoreless on six hits over the final eight frames in the final game of the first round.
In the first game of the second round, Tetsuya Tani singled and doubled and drove in a pair of runs to give Naruto Kogyo a 3-2 win over Daitaidai Namisho and put the Tokushima Prefecture school into the quarterfinals of the tourney for the first time in 29 years.
In the third game, southpaw side-slinger Tsuyoshi Wada shut out Hokkaido's Mukawa on seven hits, pitching out of jams in the eighth and ninth innings, as Hiroshima Shogyo moved into the quarterfinals with a 1-0 victory.