Inheriting a Perfect Situation : Sue Hall’s Coaching Job at Kennedy High School, Like Irish’s Softball Team, Couldn’t Be Much Better

Sue Hall had found a great job.

Last summer, Hall, then the Woodbridge softball coach, was looking for a position that would offer her a full-time teaching job--rather than just substitute-teacher status--in addition to a coaching job, and that was close to her home in Long Beach.

Kennedy High School offered all those things.

“It just came up,” Hall said. “It was the perfect situation.”

But even Hall, when she took the job, didn’t realize quite how ideal it was. She inherited a Kennedy softball team that was returning 11 players, 9 of them starters, and also got a freshman pitcher named Cheryl Longeway.

Now Kennedy is the top-seeded team in the 3-A playoffs, which start today. The Irish, who will play host to Saddleback at 3 p.m., are 20-5 and posted a 14-0 record on their way to the Garden Grove League championship.

“I didn’t realize just how good they were,” Hall said of her team. “But I can’t imagine any team being better, player for player.”

There is no doubt that Kennedy is one of the more balanced teams in the county. Included on its roster are two 1987 All-Southern Section 4-A first-team selections, shortstop Missy Gyde and second baseman Laurie Graper. Gyde, selected to this year’s All-Garden Grove League first team, has two home runs and four doubles this season, and Graper, an all-league second-team choice, is hitting .310.

First baseman Deanna Mayes, one of four seniors on the team, was an all-league first-team pick who leads the team with a .356 average. She has accepted a full scholarship to the University of Nebraska.

Junior catcher Kris Vucurevic and center fielder Suzie Berdis, the team’s leadoff hitter who has great speed, also were all-league first-team selections.

Hall, a Foothill graduate who attended college and played softball first at UC Santa Barbara and then at Chapman, has stressed fundamentals since practice started. And it’s paying off.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that we have the best defense in the county,” Hall said. “I can’t imagine there’s another team that’s as solid.”

So Kennedy has a great defense. But the team’s good fortunes don’t stop at the pitcher’s mound.

Longeway is only a freshman, but she already has established herself as one of the top pitchers in the county.

She is 18-3, has thrown three no-hitters and has batted .405 in league play. She was named most valuable player of the Cypress tournament and the Garden Grove League and has been a pleasant surprise to her coach.

“People kept telling me I had a good pitcher coming in,” Hall said. “But I’d just say, ‘Yeah, but she’s a freshman.’ ”

Longeway, who pitched the 15-and-under Batbusters traveling team to a national championship last summer, is definitely still a freshman in many ways. When she was named league MVP, she asked if being MVP was a lesser honor than being named to the first team.

“I don’t really know what it means,” she said. “I know it’s an honor. I guess it hasn’t hit me yet.”

Said Hall: “We just laughed when she said that . . . she’s young, but I have a lot of confidence in her.”

And Hall has a high standard to match. In her three years at Woodbridge, two as head coach, she had one of the county’s best pitchers, Tiffany Boyd.

“Tiffany has a killer attitude,” Hall said. “Cheryl is still young. She can be tough when she needs to be, but if it’s a piece-of-cake game, it’s a different story.”

Kennedy has had some piece-of-cake games this season.

“Sometimes I would have liked some harder competition,” Mayes said.

Some think the reason for the team’s success is because of Kennedy’s move from the Empire to the Garden Grove League and from Division 4-A to 3-A.

But Kennedy has played its share of 4-A teams this season and has performed well. The team split with Mater Dei and Cypress, beat Righetti and Thousand Oaks, and lost a 1-0 game to Gahr, the top-seeded team in the 4-A, a game in which Longeway pitched a no-hitter.

So don’t tell the Kennedy girls how lucky they are to be dropped to a lower division. They think they could do just as well in the 4-A.

“I’m curious to see how we would do in the 4-A,” Longeway said. “I think we’d do pretty good.”