Three Orange Empire Teams Seeded

The Orange Empire Conference will be well represented in the regional baseball playoffs, but not well enough, according to Scott Pickler, coach of defending state-champion Cypress.

Rancho Santiago (26-12), which won its third consecutive conference title, received the No. 4 seed in the 16-team field, which was announced Monday.

It will be the Dons’ fifth consecutive appearance in the playoffs.

Riverside (26-13), the second-place team, and third-place Fullerton (19-17-1) also qualified.

The first round is a best-of-three series at the home of the higher seeded team, starting Friday and continuing Saturday.

Rancho Santiago plays host to No. 13 Palomar (21-15-1), No. 9 Riverside travels to No. 8 San Diego City (23-11), and No. 14 Fullerton (19-17-1) is at No. 3 Los Angeles Harbor (33-9).

Cypress won its final six games to gain a third-place tie with Fullerton at 12-12, but lost three of four of the teams’ head-to-head meetings. But Pickler still had hope Cypress would qualify because last season Fullerton made the playoffs as the fourth-place team from the conference at 11-13.

“I can’t believe what happened,” he said. “I don’t understand how they can do that. It’s just not fair, not fair to the kids.”

The deciding factor against Cypress was that it would have been the fourth team coming from the conference. Last season, the overall strength of the conference justified the presence of four teams in the playoffs, but that rationale didn’t work this time.

Cypress still had some strong factors in its favor. The Chargers had 26 victories, won two tournament co-championships and won their final six games, all things to be considered, according to the state code.

Fullerton Coach Nick Fuscardo is the conference’s representative at the seeding meeting.

“I had a bad feeling about this meeting before it started,” he said. “I talked for about 10 minutes about Cypress, but it didn’t matter. It was like everybody had their mind made up before the meeting about what was going to happen.”

In the other first-round playoff series: No. 16 San Bernardino Valley (21-16) is at No. 1 Los Angeles Pierce (28-6-1), No. 15 Cuesta (20-14) is at No. 2 Cerritos (27-8-1), No. 12 San Diego Mesa (20-17) is at No. 5 Mt. San Antonio (27-14), No. 11 Ventura (21-14) is at No. 6 Citrus (30-8), and No. 10 East Los Angeles (26-13) is at No. 7 Long Beach (26-13-1).

The eight winners this week advance to a pair of four-team regionals May 15-17 at sites to be determined. The winner of each regional advances to the state tournament May 23-25 at the Riverside Sports Complex.

While Orange County was for the most part insulated from the violent events in Los Angeles last week, it did have a slight impact on local athletes.

Cypress’ baseball team got caught in a transportation pinch when its bus was recalled to its Los Angeles garage at 5:30 p.m. while the Chargers were in the middle of a five-run, ninth-inning rally during their 12-9 victory over Fullerton.

Afterward, Coach Pickler hardly had time to enjoy the victory while trying to pair players with vacancies in the cars of parents and girlfriends, who make up most of the crowd at a community college sporting event.

Also, the Southern California track and field preliminaries, scheduled for last Saturday in Santa Barbara, were postponed until Wednesday so athletes wouldn’t have to travel through Los Angeles over the weekend.

Sherbeck Shindig: Fullerton will hold a ceremony May 13 honoring Hal Sherbeck, who is retiring after 31 years as football coach and athletic director.

Several members of the coaching and teaching staffs are expected to speak, beginning at 11 a.m. in the campus quadrangle.

Contact: Fullerton middle infielder Ramon Apodaca completed the regular season with one strikeout in 181 plate appearances.

Apodaca, a sophomore from Mexico who played shortstop and second base, hit .352 (56-159). He had five doubles and drove in 19 runs, hitting mostly in the second spot for the Hornets.

He walked 17 times, was hit once and had four sacrifices.

Community College Notes

Ryan Relph set a Saddleback single-season record by being hit by a pitch 17 times. Saddleback also set a single-season team record by turning 77 double plays . . . It was a down year in power in as Cypress led all Orange Empire Conference baseball teams with 36 home runs. Saddleback had 35, Fullerton 22, Rancho Santiago 21, Riverside 18, Golden West 16, Orange Coast 14. Remember 1988 when Rancho Santiago’s Bob Hamelin hit 31 home runs.

Greg Folsom of Orange Coast won the conference batting title at .466 (41-88). Daniel Hernandez of OCC was second at . 442 (65-147). Mark Rushlow of Fullerton was tops with eight home runs. David Newhan and Greg Cole of Cypress had seven each as did Mark Wells of Saddleback and David Schultz of Golden West. Chris Sauritch of Saddleback led with 40 RBIs. Newhan had 39.

Mike Fontana (11-0) of Rancho Santiago led pitchers with 11 victories, strikeouts with 95 and earned-run average at 1.55. Fontana is the most likely candidate for the conference’s most valuable player award.