The Preps : Southern Section 2--A Softball Championship : PLAY IT AGAIN : Woodbridge, Laguna Hills Hope to Decide Something This Time Around

The Woodbridge and Laguna Hills high school softball teams will take care of some unfinished business tonight. They hope.

The two teams will meet in the Southern Section 2-A championship at Mayfair Park in Lakewood at 6 p.m.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Last year, the two teams--who had split their Pacific Coast League games and ended up as league co-champions--met in the 2-A final to decide, once and for all, which was the better team.

Fourteen innings later, the game ended in a scoreless tie because the Southern Section rules do not allow another inning to begin in a championship game after three hours have expired. The two teams were declared co-champions, but there wasn’t a lot of celebrating.

“You play so hard for three months, every day after school, and then they say, ‘Sorry, we’re out of time,’ ” Woodbridge pitcher Tiffany Boyd said. “It’s like someone taking out your heart. I’d rather have lost and at least know where the dust settled.”

Laguna Hills’ Leah Miller agreed.

“I wasn’t happy about it at all,” she said. “Later I was, when we could call ourselves champions. But, still, it wasn’t the same.”

Miller was the one who saved Laguna Hills from a defeat at the hands of Woodbridge in last year’s championship game.

In the bottom of the seventh inning, with Woodbridge runners at first and second, Boyd hit a long fly ball to the left-center field fence. Miller made a running, leaping catch at the fence, collided with left fielder Erika Schlitz, but still threw to shortstop Kris Santagata, who made a perfect relay to the plate to throw out what would have been the winning run.

“I hate to say it, but I don’t remember much of anything about it,” Miller said. “But I’m glad to be playing them again.”

Both teams are happy for the rematch. But the game won’t be an exact duplicate of last year’s.

Laguna Hills is the most changed of the two. The Hawks not only lost starting pitcher Dawn Roberts, now at Princeton, but they also lost their entire starting infield. And last year’s coach, Cliff Jarmie, has been replaced by last year’s assistant, Cary Crouch.

“I didn’t think we were going to get this far,” said catcher Shelley Carey, who also started last year. “At first, we couldn’t really play together. But we’ve gelled.”

One of the main reasons they have come together is newcomer Margo Melendrez, a junior, who transferred from Capistrano Valley. She has become Laguna Hills’ starting pitcher.

“They’re very different pitchers,” Carey said. “Dawn was a fastball pitcher, she overpowered people. Margo is a junkball pitcher. She gets people frustrated.”

Melendrez is 19-8 and has pitched 3 shutouts in the playoffs. She is also hitting .643 (9 for 14) in the playoffs and has been a big part of the success of the Hawks, who were expected to suffer through a rebuilding year.

“We’ve surprised everyone, including ourselves,” Carey said.

Woodbridge, on the other hand, is not much of a surprise. The Warriors lost only two players to graduation. They also lost their coach, Sue Hall, who took them to the finals in both her years at Woodbridge. She will be on the same bench as the Warriors tonight, but not until the game is over. Hall coaches at Kennedy, which will play in the 3-A final after the Woodbridge game.

But the top-seeded Warriors do have Boyd back. A senior, headed for NCAA softball champion UCLA, Boyd has had another phenomenal year and is hungry for a championship to top it off.

“My freshman year we lost in the semis, my sophomore year we lost in the final,” Boyd said. “Last year we tied in the final, so that just leaves one thing to do.”

Last year, Boyd pitched nine no-hitters, including four in a row, and led the team with a .450 batting average. This year, she is again leading the team in hitting with a .350 average entering the playoffs. On the mound, she is 23-4 and has pitched eight no-hitters, including one in the playoffs, three of them perfect games. She has struck out 413 batters in 197 innings and, most impressive of all, has not given up an earned run this season.

“She’s our leader,” Charisse Kiino, Woodbridge first baseman, said. “We know we can rely on her.”

She also provides some motivation for Laguna Hills.

“We play so much better against her,” Miller said. “It’s a challenge. I want to get an earned run off her.”

Laguna Hills scored an unearned run off Woodbridge in the last league game the two teams played, beating the Warriors, 1-0. Woodbridge had won the first game, 1-0. So, though Woodbridge won the Pacific Coast League title outright this season, there is still an evenness to this rivalry.

“There’s definitely some unfinished business,” Crouch said.

And neither team wants to settle for a tie this year.

“If we’re tied 2 hours and 59 minutes into the game,” Boyd said, “I’m going to throw sixteen straight balls and walk in the run. No, not really, but I’d trade an earned run for a victory.”