Prep Review : Villa Park Crams for League Tests, Fails Three Times

In the space of a few hours Saturday, the Villa Park High School baseball team’s record went from 4-0 to 4-3. A nonleague doubleheader loss to Mission Viejo (9-3, 3-1) and an 8-6 loss to Huntington Beach in the Loara tournament final took care of that.

The Spartans’ next game will be against Canyon, in their Century League opener Friday, which means they will go into league play with all of seven games’ worth of experience.

Of course, seven games is a lot compared to some nonleague schedules. Trabuco Hills, Buena Park and Troy, for example, prepare with three games. Valencia, Bolsa Grande and Laguna Beach take four games to prepare.

It’s all because of the Southern Section’s short nonleague baseball season. Teams aren’t allowed to have their first practices until Feb. 22. Their first scrimmages are just five days later, and their first nonleague games start after only 10 practices.

Baseball’s fast start has been a fact of coaching life for some time, and it wasn’t helped when the Southern Section last year decided to lop off a week of the season with a “dead week” (Feb. 15-21), during which spring sports can’t be played.

“I think the situation is terrible,” said Mike Dodd, Huntington Beach coach. “It really doesn’t allow us to get ourselves ready.”

To try to get ready in such a short time, coaches are forced to enter tournaments and schedule doubleheaders and to try to squeeze as many games as they can out of two weeks.

Some coaches believe that in the rush to get ready, someone might get hurt, especially a young pitcher who could hurt his throwing arm.

“I think they’ll eventually have to re-evaluate the preseason,” said Dave Demerest, La Quinta coach. “The way things are now, there’s a real possibility of injuries because people are trying to get ready too quick.”

Coaches also say a new player’s opportunity to show what he can do is decreased. With a shorter time to prepare, many coaches say they are less inclined to try new lineups or players.

“You really don’t have the opportunity to experiment,” Dodd said. “You’ve got to go with what you know as quick as you can. So it’s really tough on a kid trying to work his way up.”

Dave Ochoa, Villa Park coach, said: “It also impacts the marginal players. You really don’t have a lot of stuff to base your cuts on, and a kid might get cut who might have shown you something . . . if you had time to see it.”

In the past, the Loara tournament has been delayed weeks and sometimes months by bad weather.

Mike McNary, Servite coach, said, “The Farmer’s Almanac usually checks with the Loara tournament for planting times.”

Perhaps the tournament could develop some reference material of its own. The tournament has a complicated bracket system. Every team in the tournament is guaranteed five games. There’s no double-elimination to pare down the brackets. So more categories must be created for the teams that are still around.

So you not only get championship semifinals, but semifinals for fifth place and seventh place. It can get so confusing that even coaches forget what they’re playing for.

Demerest, asked what his La Quinta team’s 5-1 victory over Sunny Hills meant, said: “I think it was for the pen and pencil set.”

Actually it was a seventh-place semifinal.

You might say that Marcus Esposito is pretty valuable to the El Modena baseball team. Esposito, a junior pitcher, threw a no-hitter Saturday against Rancho Alamitos in the Tustin tournament. El Modena won the game, 7-0. Esposito won his other start, 7-1, over Orange, giving up seven hits.

Marcus is 2-0; El Modena is 2-4.

Esposito, who plays quarterback on the El Modena football team, relies on his fastball, even though his size (5-feet 10-inches, 155 pounds) would seem to suggest a few more changeups.

El Modena Coach Don Mott hadn’t intended for Esposito to pitch the entire game against Rancho Alamitos, “but then someone told me he had a no-hitter going, so I thought I’d leave him in until that ended. Of course, it didn’t.”

The golf teams of Valencia and El Dorado high schools will have a good opportunity to get acquainted this week. The teams are scheduled to play four matches this week--Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.