Error-Prone West Picked Clean by East in Softball

How much fun are seven errors and an 8-3 loss?

That was the question of the day Saturday at Cal State Northridge, where the East squad, aided by six West errors, scored two earned runs en route to a lopsided victory in the Daily News all-star softball game.

While the West dismissed the game as a meaningless, rollicking outing, East Coach Al Weil thought that excuse was as poor as some of the plays in the field.

“Sure, you play to have fun,” the coach said, “but if you’re not going to play to win, why play?”

Kym Weil, who plays for her father at Hart High, struck out the first five batters she faced and had a perfect game when she was taken out after four innings.

The right-hander, who was 26-3 with an 0.33 earned-run average this season, returned in the eighth to pitch another perfect inning. Weil, the game’s most valuable player, then gave up five singles and two earned runs in the final inning.

She finished with 12 strikeouts in six innings.

“Everyone feels that the City and (Southern) sections are the same, but they’re totally different,” the Southern Section 4-A Division co-Player of the Year said. “There’s a lot more talent in the (Southern) Section. It’s a lot harder to win the (Southern Section) title than it is the City.”

Most of the victorious East players are from Southern Section teams, and most of the West players represented City schools.

While Weil was using her rising fastball to strike out nine in the first four innings, throwing only 42 pitches, her teammates staked her to a 3-0 lead behind one infield single--one of two hits surrendered by El Camino Real pitcher Chrissy Peck in five innings.

The decisive run scored in the bottom of the sixth when Brandy Rico of Saugus hit a two-run double to center field off Chatsworth pitcher Kathy Regan. Those were the East’s only earned runs.

“You can’t think of reasons for errors,” West Coach Neils Ludlow of El Camino Real said. “We made a lot of mistakes that we normally wouldn’t make. But the main things are that everybody got a chance to play and that the girls had fun. Not the outcome.”