Summer Travel Ball Can Put Softball Players on Road to College

Each summer the best young female fast-pitch softball players in the nation, most of them from Southern California, spend hours on softball fields in the hot sun. They sweat, hit, catch, slide and travel to other states and sometimes foreign countries to play, trying to transform the dust of the diamonds into pay dirt--a college scholarship.

It is called travel league softball or “travel ball,” and it might be the surest route to a free ride to college for gifted athletes. In return, those players must spend a large amount money--often more than $1,000 each summer--and time on the game, usually at the expense of their social lives.

Lisa Fernandez is arguably the top high school pitcher in the country. She led St. Joseph of Lakewood to the Southern Section 5-A championship and was named that division’s co-player of the year with pitcher De De Weiman of Gahr. She and Weiman pitch for the 19-and-under senior team, the Panthers of Cypress.

Fernandez will attend UCLA this fall on a scholarship she has spent the past decade earning through travel ball.

She was exposed to softball early. Her father, Antonio, played semipro baseball in his native Cuba. He and his wife, Emilia, began playing coed slow-pitch softball when they moved to the United States and Fernandez would tag along as the ball girl.

At 8 she began playing Little Miss fast pitch, and her career developed from there with the help of her parents.

“We used to go from league to league to try to find the best leagues and the best competition,” Fernandez, 18, said. “That was my parents. They always wanted me to have the best competition.”

They also drummed into her that she couldn’t go anywhere in life without a college education. So she studied calculus and physics in high school, maintaining a 3.0 grade point average, and she played softball-- a lot.

“Sometimes it can get tough mentally, especially when you get into the (senior or 19-and-under) category. A lot of girls’ minds start to shift and they start getting into guys and going out. At times I wanted to go out and have some fun, but I always have to remember what my goals are and right now, softball is what is getting me through college.”

Said Panther Manager Larry Mays: “You talk about camaraderie and learning to be a team player and those kinds of things, but in fact there is one tangible end item, and that is a college scholarship.”

Travel league softball is a highly competitive showcase for the nation’s best players. Teams range from 12-and-under up to 19-and-under before players can graduate to the major open division for women of any age.

The most competitive summer softball is run by the American Softball Assn., which the U.S. Olympic Committee recognizes as the governing body of softball. ASA holds annual national championships in each age division. Though softball is not yet an Olympic sport, it is being played at the U.S. Olympic Festival in Oklahoma City.

The average high school team might have one girl good enough to play travel ball at the ASA level, said Mays, 47, whose Panthers were national champions in the 12-and-under division in 1982. The next four years they won the 15-and-under division national championship. He then formed a senior team (18-and-under at the time), which has finished second the past two seasons to the national champion California Raiders, who practice in Garden Grove.

“Travel ball is for the purists . . . those who are the most competitive, and those who want to continue with their softball through college,” Mays said.

Mays oversees a nationwide computer technology system for a major food processing company based in Fullerton. But managing the Panthers requires more than 20 hours a week in season, he said.

Mays has the leanness of a former athlete and the squint of a man who spends many days in the sun. He gets physical therapy on his back and sometimes takes 10 minutes to get out of his car because of all the softballs he has whipped around for batting practice in 17 years of coaching youth softball.

Mays said he receives more than 100 calls each season from girls wanting to play for the Panthers. He has openings for possibly two or three.

The Panthers are popular because they have a reputation for being good and because they are the only local team with a sponsor. It costs each player between $1,000 and $1,500 a season to play travel ball.

The girls play a winter warmup season from October to December. They practice, play a few tournaments and hustle sponsorship money. The Panthers, for example, petition local doctors and dentists and other business people. They sit as an audience at Hollywood tapings of game shows. They sell french fries at city fairs and hold clinics for younger players. Any money not raised by the players is contributed by their sponsor.

The girls take a break from travel ball to play school softball from late February to early June, then they go directly into the heart of the travel ball season--the summer season that culminates with the national championship tournament in August.

Why such a clamor to get on a team that will require a high school-aged girl to practice six hours every summer Sunday that the Panthers are not traveling? Why so much ado about spending (or earning through fund-raisers) between $1,000 and $1,500 each summer to play softball?

“The way we look at it, most girls in our program are going to get a $40,000 scholarship (to college),” said Phil Bruder, co-coach of the Raiders with Colleen Silva. “So for two years, if it costs them $3,000 to be a Raider, they’ve made out like bandits.”

Bruder is a physical education teacher and varsity baseball, boys’ basketball, softball and girls’ volleyball coach at Oak Hill High School in Sepulveda. His Raiders have dominated the senior division since he formed the team in 1975, a year after ASA formed an 18-and-under division. The Raiders have won eight of the 13 national championships and finished lower than third only in 1980, when Bruder did not field a senior team.

Bruder is male, as are most of the coaches of the senior and younger divisions, but unlike most of the other coaches, he did not get into travel ball to coach a daughter.

He coaches, he said, because it is one thing he does well and because he wants to help girls get scholarships. He has been successful at that, though he says he has been criticized for his methods.

Bruder said that since 1981, 95% of the girls in his program who wanted to attend college have received full scholarships and the other 5% have received partial aid.

“I can’t promise them a scholarship,” Bruder said. “I’m not a college coach. What I do tell them are statistics like last year, 12 players on the final three teams in the country were former Raiders.”

UCLA had six former Raiders, Fresno State and Arizona three each, Bruder said.

By the time a girl gets a college scholarship, she and her coaches have put in years of practice playing high school ball and, in the off-season, playing Little Miss or Bobby Sox and travel ball concurrently. The athlete has probably paid to attend a pitching or hitting school or have a coach refine her skills.

Southern California has strong youth leagues, with the Cypress Girls Softball League being one of the best. Some of the highest caliber youth softball is played in Southern California, in large part at Cypress-Arnold Park, where many of the local travel teams compete.

Last year, as they have since 1982, Southern California teams have won the ASA national championship in each age division.

The Raiders won the senior 18-and-under division, the junior Batbusters of Westminster won the 15-and-under championship and the Orcutt Express of Santa Maria won the 12-and-under championship.

For most of these athletes, softball has been a way of life.

Cheryl Longeway, 16, who pitches for the defending ASA national champion 16-and-under Batbusters, started playing softball when she was 6. She pitched Kennedy High School to the Southern Section 4-A championship as a freshman in 1988 and to the quarterfinals last season.

She lives about a mile from Cypress-Arnold and recalls that her father would cart her down to the park to watch the high school and travel-ball games. She remembers being in awe of the Raiders’ pitchers.

“They were so much better (than I was). It was just like a Little League baseball player watching a guy in the major leagues. It’s like, oh my God, they’re so good.”

As do the majority of the top-level travel-ball players, Longeway is focused on one thing--earning a college scholarship. That constant push to excel has taken a bit of the luster of playing on the diamonds.

“When you’re little, softball is so neat,” she said. “But when you get into travel ball and competition, you are playing and practicing so much, it is like, how much can you love softball?”

The senior girls usually practice an average of six hours during each week in the summer and then play in local or out-of-state tournaments on the weekends. The Panthers played in a Las Vegas tournament June 16-18 and in Oklahoma City July 6-10. They have traveled to Bakersfield and played in Cypress and Fullerton. They will head to Sioux Falls, S.D., in August for the national tournament.

In March of 1987 the senior Panthers went to Lima, Peru, to represent the U.S. in the Pan American trials.

Said Longeway: “It is like softball becomes a job after a while.”

So much so that at times, the thought of quitting has crossed her mind. But she has set her goals on getting a college scholarship, and that means playing travel ball.

“I think, God! I could be something,” Longeway said. “It’s a free ride to be a teacher or a lawyer. I’ll have an opportunity to go to college that a lot of people don’t have.”

Besides, travel ball is not all practice and drudgery.

“The fun part is when you’re not playing and you’re with your team at the motel. But when you get on the field . . . when you get into this level, it’s not fun and games any more,” Longeway said.

There is definitely pressure to succeed, on the coaches and the players. And former Angel first baseman Rod Carew, who had more than 3,000 hits in his 19-year professional baseball career, thinks that some coaches are handling the pressure inappropriately--by illegally recruiting players away from other teams and by being abusive to players.

“If (travel ball) can help a kid who can’t pay for a college education, it’s great,” Carew said. “But I hate to see what they have to go through going through these programs and the abuse they have to take.”

Raider Coach Bruder acknowledged that he is a “yeller.” But he maintains that he recruits a caliber of athlete who can handle the pressure of being a Raider.

“You have to have a huge heart to play for the Raiders,” Bruder said. “You have to be someone who wants to try so hard to participate and excel. So these aren’t your normal little girls. These are your super athletes. And that is the main reason the college coaches come flocking to the Raiders. Because if you can play under the enormous pressure of everybody setting up their season to beat the Raiders, if you can play under that kind of pressure every inning and every game, you can play Division I college ball.”

Bruder at times has felt sorry for yelling at a kid, but said his “yelling does not come from physical mistakes. Everybody makes physical mistakes. I yell at mental mistakes that come from a lack of mental intensity, a lack of preparation.

“But the parents know every one of my kids have 100% of my backing and I am not yelling at them because I don’t like them. I care for everyone of my kids.”

Bruder is upset that the ASA has changed its senior division from 18-and-under to 19-and-under this season.

He believes the move may undermine what many coaches believe is the basic purpose of youth travel ball--to provide a showcase for great high school players to help them earn college scholarships. The higher age limit allows players who already have earned scholarships to continue playing at the senior level instead of moving upward to allow high school juniors and seniors a shot in the limelight.