Redondo’s Ammentorp Was Steady at the Helm : Prep baseball: The Times’ Coach of the Year helped the Sea Hawks regroup after a 3-6 start and guided the team to a 20-10 season.

In five seasons as Redondo High baseball coach, Tim Ammentorp has guided the Sea Hawks to an 85-55 record, a league title and five Southern Section playoff berths. Not a bad showing in anyone’s book.

Yet, three years ago Ammentorp was on the hot seat. A group of disgruntled parents went to Redondo administrators seeking to have him removed as coach and replaced by Harry Jenkins, who resigned as Sea Hawk coach after the 1988 season with a 19-year record of 339-179-14 and 10 league titles.

It was a rough time for Ammentorp, who said he came away from the experience disappointed but with a new outlook.

“I learned a valuable lesson,” he said. “You can’t please everybody, so you’ve got to stick with what you believe in.”

It has proven to be a winning formula. In the past two seasons, Ammentorp, 36, has guided Redondo to the kind of success it enjoyed during Jenkins’ heyday. The Sea Hawks won the Ocean League title last year and came back this season with their best playoff showing since 1988.

By the end of the season, Redondo may have been playing the best baseball of any team in the area. The Sea Hawks (20-10) won 17 of their last 21 games and staged dramatic come-from-behind rallies in two of their three playoff victories before losing in the Southern Section Division II quarterfinals.

For the job he did with a team that seemed to improve with each game, Ammentorp has been selected The Times’ South Bay Coach of the Year.

The turning point in Redondo’s season came after a 7-6 tournament loss to Carson. It left the Sea Hawks with a 3-6 record. Ammentorp called a team meeting after the game, which was their third one-run loss of the week.

Said Ammentorp: “I said to the kids, ‘Hey, we’re playing just well enough to lose. Let’s find a way to win.’ ”

With that, the Sea Hawks were on their way. The team’s defensive problems, which had led to several early losses, were corrected after Ammentorp brought up freshman Ryan Stowasser to play third base and Morgan Ensberg, who came out late from basketball, made steady improvement at shortstop.

Redondo got another boost late in the season when junior third baseman Steve Rawson and senior pitcher Mike Sutton joined the team. The players, who had been academically ineligible, made valuable contributions in the last 10 games. The 6-foot-2, 225-pound Rawson hit four home runs in the cleanup spot and Sutton gave the Sea Hawks a capable reliever.

Sutton was expected to be one of Redondo’s top starting pitchers along with junior Scott Albin. But in Sutton’s absence, Ammentorp was forced to move senior left-hander Chris Peacock into the regular rotation. Although he had never pitched an inning of varsity baseball, Peacock improved sufficiently during the season to post a 5-2 record and earn All-Ocean League honors.

Jenkins, now the coach at West Torrance, said Ammentorp deserves credit for making the correct decisions under adverse conditions.

“I think he did a great job,” Jenkins said. “They had key players out who were ineligible, but they hung in there until those kids got back. He did a heck of a job holding things together.”

Ammentorp said his players deserve most of the credit.

“It was a good group of kids that worked very hard,” he said. “In my five years, they practiced harder than any of my teams. It showed. They improved as the season progressed.”

Redondo finished tied for second with Mira Costa in the Ocean League behind Beverly Hills and entered the playoffs as the league’s No. 3 team because it lost two of three games to Mira Costa. Third-place entries don’t usually stick around long in the playoffs, but the Sea Hawks managed to win three games.

After Albin pitched a shutout in a 7-0 wild-card victory over Glendora, Redondo appeared on the verge of elimination in a first-round game against Freeway League champion Troy of Fullerton. Trailing 7-2 in the top of the seventh inning, the Sea Hawks rallied for five runs, tying the score on a three-run homer by Ensberg. They won it in the eighth, 9-7, after Albin led off the inning with a home run.

Redondo staged another comeback in its second-round game against visiting Valencia of Placentia. The Sea Hawks rallied from a 5-0 deficit to tie the score, 6-6, after seven innings. They won it in the eighth on Rick Janssen’s lead-off homer that cleared the right-field fence and landed on Prospect Avenue, making the final score 7-6.

“I don’t know if I was ever as excited as when Janssen hit that home run,” Ammentorp said.

The same scenario was played out in Redondo’s quarterfinal game against second-seeded Lompoc. After falling behind, 4-0, the Sea Hawks tied the score and sent the game into extra innings. But Redondo’s string of comebacks ended as Lompoc scored twice in the eighth to win, 6-4.

“I don’t think the players ever did not believe they could win,” said Ammentorp, a former backup catcher at UCLA. “It’s a confident group of kids. I didn’t say a word to them in any of our comebacks late in the season. That was them. They believed in themselves.”

With 13 varsity players returning, including Albin, Ensberg, Rawson and all-league second baseman Domonek Prince, Ammentorp thinks Redondo can have an even better season in 1994.

“I’m never satisfied,” he said. “I want to take the next step.”

Past Winners

PLAYER OF THE YEAR

Year Player School Pos. 1988 Scott Davison Redondo P-SS 1989 Dan Melendez St. Bernard 1B-P 1990 Tate Seefried El Segundo 1B-P 1991 Mike Busby Banning P 1992 Jason Kendall Torrance C 1993 Derek Nicholson West Torrance INF

COACH OF THE YEAR

Year Coach School 1988 Harry Jenkins Redondo 1989 John Stevenson El Segundo 1990 Garry Poe Rolling Hills 1991 Nick Van Lue Narbonne 1992 Jerry Lovarov San Pedro 1993 Tim Ammentorp Redondo