Yuya Hayashi hit for the cycle to lead Komadai Tomakomai of Hokkaido into the semifinals of the National High School Baseball Championship on Thursday while Ehime's Saibi came within two wins of completing a spring-summer double.
Hayashi hit a solo homer in the second inning to open the scoring and Komadai Tomakomai went on to beat Yokohama of Kanagawa Prefecture 6-1 with an 18-hit attack in a quarterfinal game at Koshien Stadium.
Second-baseman Hayashi also doubled in the third, tripled in the fifth and singled in the ninth to become the fifth player to hit for the cycle in the history of the annual tournament and first in six years. Komadai Tomakomai is the first Hokkaido school to reach the semifinals in 76 years.
In the other quarterfinal played on Thursday, outfielder Hiroyuki Komatsu singled home the winning run in the bottom of the ninth inning to give Saibi a 2-1 victory over Chukyodai Chukyo of Aichi Prefecture.
Yuya Fukui scattered eight hits and struck out five over the distance to help Saibi, the winner of the national invitational tournament this spring, book a place in the semifinals.