Toro Baseball--Some Good News and Some Bad : Women’s Coach Finds That Strong Dicipline Pays Off on Diamond, Along With Wise Scheduling, Recruiting

You don’t swear, throw your helmet, miss curfew or ever arrive late to practice if you’re on Jennifer Gorecki’s team.

“If you do,” said Cal State Dominguez Hills outfielder Deb Cohen, “forget it, you’re history.”

Gorecki, Dominguez Hills’ second-year softball coach, is very much a disciplinarian.

“I think the discipline is good to a point,” said senior third baseman Lisa Marzlo, who has played under three softball coaches at Dominguez Hills. “But sometimes I feel I’m being treated like a baby. . . . On one road trip she wouldn’t even let us go across the street to Burger King. We are in college you know.”

Gorecki, who is also the women’s volleyball coach at Dominguez Hills, believes wise scheduling and quality recruiting can make any athletic program successful.

That doesn’t mean recruiting is always quality, though.

“My first year here,” Gorecki said, shaking her head and laughing, “I had a very unusual experience. During open registration, I was literally looking for girls in tennis shoes. I would have done anything for players.”

The 31-year old coach scrounged up the personnel to give the Toros a winning season. They finished with a 23-11 record, despite having only five players before Gorecki’s desperate search started.

“Once she gets players, she communicates and works real well with them,” said junior outfielder Betsy Saxor, who also played under former Dominguez Hills softball Coach Mya Sanders. “Jennifer is very straightforward and professional, and she makes sure the job gets done.”

This season Dominguez Hills softball got off to its best start ever. Two weeks ago the Toros were ranked sixth nationally in Division II, the first time the program has been ranked that high. In the latest poll, however, the Toros were ranked 19th with an 11-12 record.

“I can’t say enough good things about her,” said Cal State Northridge softball Coach Gary Torgeson, who has led his teams to four national championships, including the 1987 title. “That team is very well coached. “Jennifer really does a lot with what she’s got. It’s not that she has little talent, just little in numbers.”

Gorecki knew when she took the job at the Carson campus that she’d have less to work with than most of Dominguez Hills’s competitors. Unlike most teams in her conference, Gorecki doesn’t have a pitching coach or a batting cage because of budget limitations.

“We’re fighting a lot of battles,” she said, sitting in her office, which is a cubicle in a badminton facility shared by several coaches. “I knew it was going to be a real challenge.”

Gorecki is the only coach in the California Collegiate Athletic Assn. who heads two teams.

“She can do it because she’s real intense in terms of goals,” said Dominguez Hills Athletic Director Susan Carberry, who originally hired Gorecki in 1986 as the women’s volleyball coach. “She also has great intensity and lots of knowledge to produce winning programs.”

It’s still difficult however, for one person to run two teams, even if their seasons don’t coincide.

Marzlo, who played softball under Sanders and Coach Kathy Strahan before that, says it is impossible for Gorecki to be fully dedicated to either program.

“For example, during softball recruiting she’s busy coaching volleyball and vice versa,” Marzlo said. “Still, Jennifer gives everything she has for the program and she fights to get what we need, but we need to work on recruiting.”

Cohen, who also plays volleyball for the Toros, says it’s tough for Gorecki to divide her time between the two teams.

“It takes away from practice,” Cohen said. “For instance, softball practice is almost year-round and she can’t always be there, so (Assistant) Coach (Janis) Ruetz leaves volleyball practice early and runs softball practice. Dividing coaches like that is bad in a lot of ways.”

Gorecki played four years of volleyball at Bowling Green State University and has played slow-pitch softball since 1971. Before she came to Dominguez Hills, she coached four years of softball at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, a Division III school.

She went to Wisconsin in 1983 after coaching volleyball, basketball and softball for three years at National Trail High School in Ohio and serving as a graduate assistant coach at Bowling State, where she received her masters degree in athletic administration .

Softball at Wisconsin-River Falls was only a club sport with an 8-15 record before Gorecki took over. She left the team in 1986 with a second place finish in the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. She was also named WIAC coach of the year in 1985.

“She’s the one who gave our softball program credible varsity status,” said Judy Wilson, University of Wisconsin-River Falls women’s athletic director. “Jennifer is a very good technician and she’s a very hard worker.”

Gorecki resigned after four seasons because she felt overworked.

“I was running out of steam” she said. “They wanted more in the teaching area than I could give. When I resigned, I didn’t have a job lined up, I just gambled to make a point.”

In 1986, Gorecki’s first year coaching volleyball, Dominguez Hills tied for fourth place in the CCAA with a 13-16 record. That was the Toros’ best finish since 1982.

In 1987, Gorecki’s top two volleyball recruits quit the team with little notice. One left because she was homesick and the other wasn’t satisfied with the program. The Toros placed seventh in the eight-team CCAA with a 6-25 record.

“We struggled,” Gorecki said, “. . . but I can’t take away from the effort. We had a lot of close matches and we did good things.”

No matter what the Toros do though, conference titles are probably out of reach for either of Gorecki’s teams because their schedule includes Cal State Northridge, the defending NCAA champion in women’s volleyball and softball.

“That may be a little discouraging for her because we haven’t developed the tradition like Northridge,” said Ruetz, who assists Gorecki in both sports. “But we’re making progress. Jennifer is very well organized and demands that her players perform their best.”

It may however, take more than that to make two athletic programs prominent in one of the nation’s strongest Division II conferences.

Gorecki says she was aware of that when she took the job.

“I know there’s a lot of work to be done,” Gorecki said. “We will just have to continue to grow.”