Newbury Park Has Too Much for Buena, 15-0

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Newbury Park High softball Coach Dick Intelkofer uses a prop to help inspire his team.

Lots of coaches do it. Some use movies, some use taped speeches, some even use music.

Intelkofer, however, is a bit more unorthodox.

He uses leopard-skin Speedos.

The Speedos were a birthday gift from the girls on his softball team, the idea being, of course, that he’d wear them.

He refused. So the two parties struck a deal. If the Panthers win a Southern Section 4-A softball championship, Intelkofer models in leopard skin after the game. If not, the Speedos never see the light of day.

Thursday, after Newbury Park defeated Buena, 15-0, in the first round of the Southern Section playoffs, Intelkofer held up the Speedos during a team meeting, to the cheers of his team.

“From now on, we go step by step,” he announced. “Today, you only get to see them.

“I really don’t want to wear them,” Intelkofer said after the meeting broke up. “But I figured if we won the whole thing, it would be worth it.”

If the Panthers keep playing like they did against Buena, Intelkofer may just have to model.

Newbury Park pounded out 16 hits to back the two-hit pitching of Debbie Dickmann, running its overall record to 23-6.

After two scoreless innings, the Marmonte League champions broke the game open in the third, parlaying a walk, an error, three singles and a fielder’s choice into five runs.

Newbury Park added three runs in the fourth on a walk, two singles, an error and a two-run single by Wendy Tabakman, before exploding for five more runs in the fifth on five singles, a walk and a double.

Karen Westphal led the Panthers’ attack with five hits, but she had plenty of help in the hitting outburst. Every Newbury Park player got an at-bat, and only two of them failed to reach base.

“We just hit the heck out of the ball,” Intelkofer said. “Buena is a good team, but they seemed to let down after we scored a couple of times. No team or pitcher can afford to do that against us. Our girls are hungry. They want a championship badly.”

The beneficiary of all the offensive support was Dickmann, though she needed little of it. The 6-1 senior is an intimidating presence on the mound, and she made short work of Buena, the third-place team from the Channel League.

Mixing her rise pitch with a drop, Dickmann required only 63 pitches--52 of which were strikes--to dispose of the Lady Bulldogs. She pitched to 22 batters--one over the minimum--and struck out nine in improving her record to 12-4.

All in an off-day’s work, she said after the game. “I pitched slow today, and I was wild. I didn’t even throw a fastball. All junk. They swung at some bad pitches, and we played some good defense.”

And, of course, the Panthers hit.

“What we showed today has been the key to our success all year,” Intelkofer said.