DIVISION III GIRLS : Our Lady of Peace Sheds Its Role of Underdog with Victory

Our Lady of Peace won its second San Diego Section championship in three years on Thursday, but you won’t find either banner hanging in its gymnasium.

“We’re such a small school (650 enrollment) that we don’t even have a gym,” said forward Suzie Erpelding.

Not that it showed. West Hills didn’t even score until 5 1/2 minutes were already gone, by which time OLP had built a 13-point lead.

It was stretched to 23 by game’s end, 61-38, and just like that OLP gave up its season-long, prime motivating factor: the role of underdog.

“It doesn’t matter who we play,” said Yvonne Sanchez, OLP’s third-year coach, “We always consider ourselves the underdogs. Not too many people are going to believe us anymore, though.”

The Pilots’ new tag will be defending champions.

And they could be defending for a long time. OLP’s leading scorer is a freshman: Erpelding, who led the way Friday with 19 points. Another freshman, Kathleen Murphy chipped in 12, as did junior Amy Kunde.

There are only two seniors on the team, half the number of freshman. All of which means the underdog role is at least four years away for any OLP team.

But the players will try to convince you otherwise. They keep talking about that gym that doesn’t exist. It was a problem this winter more than any other in the recent past.

“We couldn’t even practice Monday because of the rain,” Erpelding continued.

The weather isn’t the worst of it, though. The asphalt, it seems, is showing some age.

“There’s cracks, a gully, big lumps and rain spots sometimes,” Sanchez said. “But you have to make do with what you have.”

Actually, the Pilots have done more than make do. They’ve taken their liability and turned it into an asset.

“It makes us a better team,” Erpelding insisted of the school’s lack of a gym, “because it makes us go through a lot of difficulties.”

So despite winning its second championship in three years, the OLP girls will continue to cling to their David complex.

“We tell ourselves we have nothing to lose, that the other team, they’re the ones with a ranking to defend,” Erpelding said. “I’ll still consider our team the underdog just because of everything we have to go through.”

West Hills had no ranking to defend. It didn’t even have a winning record. So there really was no surprise when it failed to play the role of favorite.

The Wolf Pack did itself in with a poor opening quarter and an equally lackluster final quarter. It managed only six points in each.

In the middle two quarters, however, West Hills played on a par with OLP, scoring 10 and 16 points to OLP’s 11 and 15.

Only one West Hills player, Trisha Montgomery, scored in double figures. She finished with 15, including nine of West Hills’ 16 third-quarter output.

OLP improved to 17-8. West Hills finished at 8-16.