Southern Section 4-A Playoffs : Ocean View Gets Opportunity to Prove It Can Do It All One More Time

Not everyone knows how to take advantage of a second chance. Some, when told, “Here, try again,” can only come up with the same response. A loss. A failure. A shrug. Sorry.

But not the girls on the Ocean View High School softball team. Give them a new lease on life and they roll up their jersey sleeves to embrace it, jumping in wholeheartedly with gloves poised and bats swinging.

Ocean View, which will play host to Buena in today’s 4-A quarterfinals at 3 p.m., knows what it’s like not to have a second chance.

After winning the 4-A title in 1985 in convincing fashion, going 32-0, the Seahawks failed to make it to the playoffs in 1986. Last season, Ocean View finished fourth in the Sunset League but was selected as an at-large team. The Seahawks made it to the semifinals before losing to Thousand Oaks.

“I tell them it’s a whole new season,” Coach Sarah Oakley said. “They have to be willing to forget what happened before.”

Having risen to the occasion once, Ocean View has found it can do it again.

Once again, the Seahawks finished fourth in the Sunset League, with a 5-5 record, after losing their final league game, 6-1, in error-filled fashion to third-place Marina.

But, once again, Ocean View was selected to fill an at-large berth. And the Seahawks are surprising some very good teams.

The biggest stunner was Tuesday, when Ocean View knocked off Gahr, the top-seeded team in the 4-A division and, according to the Cal-Hi Sports weekly rankings, the top team in the California.

The Seahawks, who bumped Gahr out of the playoffs in the second round last year, won, 3-0, getting four hits off junior pitcher DeDe Weiman. They also held the Gahr ace to only six strikeouts, well below her strikeout average, according to Gahr Coach John Klein.

“Ocean View is a good team,” Klein said. “They are in the toughest league in CIF. It’s an advantage to them to have such tough competition right before the playoffs.”

Why doesn’t Ocean View finish higher than fourth in league play? And why does Ocean View play so well in the playoffs? The answer, on both counts, is the Sunset League.

Teams such as league champion Fountain Valley and runner-up Edison make it difficult for a predominantly young team that isn’t used to working together.

Ocean View Coach Sarah Oakley starts only two seniors, pitcher Cindy Schneller (11-10) and second baseman Jamie Walker, who hit a two-run home run off Weiman in the second-round victory. Ocean View also suffered some injuries and illnesses, such as when leading hitter Marla Pickard came down with mononucleosis early in the season.

Sunset League pitchers such as Rae Rice of Fountain Valley and Terry Carpenter of Edison can pick apart a team that isn’t working well together. But such tough competition also can mature a team quickly.

“DeDe Weiman is just like the pitchers in our league,” Oakley said. “The league gets us prepared. We have to have good fundamentals.”

And, though they probably would rather win the league, the Seahawks realize that going into the playoffs as the underdog definitely has its advantages.

“We don’t feel any pressure on us,” Schneller said. “We were pretty loose against Gahr. There was a lot more pressure on them.”

Today the team with the pressure is Channel League champion Buena (24-2-1).

In another 4-A quarterfinal game:

Fountain Valley (23-6-1) is at Thousand Oaks (24-7). The Sunset League champions have scored 23 runs in their first two games. Freshman starter Rae Rice (18-5) continues her solid pitching. In Fountain Valley’s 8-1 victory over 1987 4-A champion Cypress, Rice threw her second straight four-hit, one-run game. Marmonte champion Thousand Oaks returns several players from last year’s team, which reached the 4-A championship game, in which the Lancers lost to Cypress.