El Segundo’s Scores Soar Like Eagles

Perhaps the most effective way to demonstrate the inequitable situation facing El Segundo High School’s baseball team in the Camino Real League this season is by the numbers:

After four league games, the Eagles have outscored the opposition 108-4.

Coach John Stevenson must be bursting with pride, right?

Hardly. If anything, he is suffering nearly as much as his outmanned foes. He dislikes embarrassing an opponent, no matter how unintentional it is, and he worries that the lack of competition could hurt his team later in the year when El Segundo begins defense of its CIF-Southern Section 2-A title.

“This is not what high school athletics are about,” Stevenson said. “They should be competitive. That’s what makes athletics a learning experience. Where there is no parity, you get humiliation from the loser and, from the winner, you get a false sense of superiority. That’s what we’re going through.”

The latest blowout occurred Wednesday night when El Segundo (10-1 overall) defeated Verbum Dei, 31-1. Two weeks ago, the Eagles handed Serra a 42-0 loss, the second-highest run total in a game in Southern Section history.

El Segundo obviously has a strong team, but Stevenson is the first to admit that the skill level of six of the Camino Real League’s eight teams is very poor. The exceptions are El Segundo and St. Bernard, tied for first place with 4-0 records.

In Wednesday’s victory, El Segundo collected 20 hits but also capitalized on five Verbum Dei errors and 12 walks.

“It used to be that you really had to earn your hits against top-notch pitching,” Stevenson said. “Nothing could be further from the truth in this league. (The pitches) are just being served up.”

At the rate El Segundo is hitting and scoring runs through only 11 games, the Eagles are a threat to rewrite the record book in several categories. For example:

*They have scored 184 runs, more than half the total of the Southern Section season record of 343 set by Montclair Prep in 1981. El Segundo’s school record is 308, set by the 1987 team.

*First baseman-pitcher Tate Seefried, with eight home runs and 31 RBIs, is halfway to the Southern Section season home run record of 16 set by Arnold Garcia of Channel Islands in 1981, and more than halfway to the RBI record of 58 set by Scott Davison of Redondo in 1987.

Six El Segundo players are batting over .400: Seefried (.574), catcher Garret Quaintance (.536), third baseman Brett Newell (.487), pitcher-first baseman Jason Wayt (.486), outfielder Kenny Talanoa (.447) and shortstop Mark Lewis (.439).

The pitching staff of right-handers Rob Croxall and Seefried and southpaw Wayt also has benefited from the lopsided victories.

Not taking anything away from his players, Stevenson says El Segundo must avoid taking its inflated statistics too seriously.

“In spite of what we’ve done to this point, we really haven’t done anything,” he said. “We could very well come in second in our league and lose in the CIF playoffs. I mean, we haven’t accomplished a thing.”

Stevenson used El Segundo’s 5-0 victory Saturday over Redondo in the Palos Verdes/Redondo Tournament as a more accurate gauge of his team’s strength.

“If we were in a league where there is some parity,” he said, “we would be losing some games.”

The baseball team finds itself in its present situation because of a move the school made two years ago. Because of declining enrollment, El Segundo found it increasingly difficult to compete against larger-enrollment schools in football. So, to solve the football team’s problem, El Segundo requested a move from the South Bay’s Pioneer League.

“What we wanted to do was go somewhere else in football and remain in the South Bay in all the other sports, which I thought was a reasonable request,” Stevenson said. “The South Bay schools basically said, ‘If you go somewhere else in football, you have to go somewhere else in everything else.’ ”

So, El Segundo left the South Bay area in athletics and was realigned in the Catholic area, where it could compete against schools with enrollments closer to its own. The move to the Santa Fe League proved beneficial to the football team, and the Eagle basketball team has remained in a competitive situation.

But the baseball team, for many years a power at El Segundo, became a big fish in a small pond.

“I have no regrets,” said Stevenson, who doubles as El Segundo’s athletic director. “I knew exactly what we were doing. It pretty much had to be done. Our football team needed a shot in the arm. You just can’t keep sending kids out there to play schools four and five times bigger than you are.”

The situation figures to get better next year when El Segundo moves to the San Fernando Valley League, where it will face a more competitive schedule in baseball.