The High Schools : Overtime Work in the Batting Cage Soon Pays Off for El Camino Real

For the El Camino Real baseball team, a few extra hours of voluntary batting practice has more than paid off.

Ryan McGuire, Del Marine, Patrick Treend, et al, spent several days of last week’s spring break taking cuts on campus.

Then they cut up Granada Hills. The Conquistadores posted consecutive wins this week for the first time this season, hammering the Highlanders, 15-0, on Wednesday and 7-2 a day later. In the first game, El Camino Real pounded out 19 hits, including two home runs by junior Bobby Kim-- in the same inning.

Kim, who entered the week batting .423, demonstrated that he needed little BP. He blasted a grand slam and a two-run shot to more than highlight the Conquistadores’ 11-run sixth inning. He finished three for four with eight runs batted in.

Said Kim: “I had never hit two home runs in an inning before. The guys went nuts.”

The key to the field’s supply shed--and the team’s success with the bat--was passed by Coach Mike Maio to McGuire for easy access over the break.

“I was out there all but one of the weekdays,” said McGuire, whose batting average was .200 before going three for six this week. “When you’re hitting as poorly as I was, you have to do something. Everyone’s erupted.

“And Del’s just exploded.”

Marine, batting just .192 entering the week, was three for four, including a triple, in the first game and four for five, including a double, in the second.

“We’ve only won two games since we’ve been back, but that’s one more than we’ve won so far,” said Maio, whose team improved to 3-7. “I don’t know what’s in the future, but the last couple of games certainly have gone our way.”

Razing Arizona: Taft basketball Coach Jim Woodard returned from Arizona this weekend, bragging about the Valley-area participants in last weekend’s McDonald’s regional all-star game in Tucson.

Oakwood’s Mitchell Butler led the West team to a 110-96 win, scoring 18 points. The UCLA-bound senior was named the game’s most valuable player.

Cleveland’s Adonis Jordan scored 10 points and teammate Lucious Harris added seven. Taft’s Dedan Thomas scored seven points and had three assists, three steals and no turnovers in 22 minutes.

“Everybody thought the East team was going to win, but the Valley guys made the difference,” Woodard crowed. “I was really proud of Dedan. Jerry Tarkanian was raving about him afterward, telling everybody that his guy was the MVP.”

Thomas has signed with Nevada Las Vegas, where Tarkanian is the coach.

Return of Langford: Rich Langford, the Simi Valley pitcher who three weeks ago hyperextended his right shoulder against Westlake, will return to the mound today against the same school, according to Simi Valley Coach Mike Scyphers.

Langford’s 0.45 earned-run average leads Valley-area Southern Section pitchers. He is 5-0, with three complete games in six starts and 46 strikeouts in 36 innings.

Rotation change: Seniors Greg Baumgartner and Chris DeCristo, Chaminade’s Nos. 1 and No. 2 pitchers at the start of the season, have been replaced by sophomore Greg Galloway and freshman Ted Corcoran in the rotation.

While Baumgartner (2-2 record, 26 walks in 22 innings, 6.70 ERA) and DeCristo (1-4, 21 walks in 21 innings, 4.33) have been plagued by control problems, Galloway (3-3, 12 in 42 1/3, 2.98) and Corcoran (1-1, seven in 15 1/3, 0.46) have provided Coach Steve Costley with relief.

“Both of them have earned the starting positions,” Costley said. “They’ve pitched well for us when we really needed pitching.”

Galloway struck out 10 in a four-hit, 10-4 victory over Bell-Jeff on Wednesday.

Corcoran, a varsity letterman in football and basketball, played at the junior-varsity level for the first half of the season before moving up when Baumgartner and DeCristo continued to struggle.

“I had heard some good things about him before the season,” Costley said of Corcoran, “but I didn’t want to put him on the varsity team based on hearsay.”

Now that Corcoran’s there, Costley vows that he’ll stay. Especially after watching Corcoran strike out 10 in a 4-3, eight-inning loss to St. Genevieve in a San Fernando Valley League opener last Wednesday.

“I guarantee that he’ll never play at the junior-varsity level again,” Costley said.

Staff writers Tim Brown, John Lynch, Vince Kowalick and John Ortega contributed to this notebook.