Spotlight Overlooks Girls’ Victories : Sports: Newbury Park softball teams won championships--but boys got all the glory.

Two Newbury Park girls’ softball teams won national championships this month. But hardly anyone noticed.

For the first time in its 22-year history, both divisions in Newbury Park’s Bobby Sox girls’ softball league brought home national titles. It was the third straight year that the older 12- to 15-year-old girls had captured the national series.

But while local newspapers featured the success of Thousand Oaks’ boys Junior League national title last week, the girls’ accomplishments received relatively little coverage.

“The girls are feeling bad about all the press that the boys’ Little League has gotten,” said Sheila Gourley, mother of 15-year-old left fielder Tara Gourley.

But all the fuss over the boys brought out the competitive spirit in these hard-as-nails fast-pitch girls.

“We should challenge them to a game,” declared Amanda Marino, the 15-year-old catcher on one winning Newbury Park all-star team. “We’ll beat them because we’re tougher.”

The disparity in media coverage reflects the public’s long-held view that girls’ organized sports are less compelling than boys’ sports, said Joseph Joyce, president of the Newbury Park Bobby Sox league.

“It’s a social issue, really,” Joyce said. “Softball is just starting to come to the forefront now. . . . But it still does not have the public awareness that baseball does.”

Softball also does not have high-paying professional leagues as a career option. So while the 13-year-old stars of the boys’ Little League team talked about one day joining the major leagues, their female counterparts could only speak Friday of plans to play softball in high school and college.

Katie Stokx, who pitched the last four innings for the 9- to 11-year-old Bobby Sox title at the national tournament in Sparks, Nev., said she plans to continue playing softball as a way to win a college scholarship.

But after college, her athletic plans will likely come to an end, Katie said.

“I’ll probably become a teacher or a nurse,” said the 11-year-old.

The two Newbury Park teams were chosen for the national tournament based on their performance in a district tournament in July at Borchard Park. They then each beat out 24 other teams to take home the national titles in a tournament that ended on a blazing hot softball diamond in Sparks on Aug. 16.

Despite temperatures that reached 100, both teams managed to keep their cool when it came to the fundamentals of softball, Marissa Keohohou, manager of one of younger Bobby Sox team.

“Our girls had the basics down,” Keohohou said. “They caught the ball with two hands, they turned their back foot and hip forward while batting and they played good defense.”

As the national titleholders, they are the top players out of 40,000 girls in the Bobby Sox league nationwide.

The softball league has teams in six western states, said George Rodriguez, chief executive of Bobby Sox National, headquartered in Buena Park.

Bobby Sox players can start out as 6-year-olds in the Mini League, then progress to the Bobby Sox Division for girls 9 to 11. The American Girl division consists of 12- to 15-year-olds; then, some girls progress to the league’s AAA Prep Division, Rodriguez said.

Many girls on the AAA girls are on high school teams as well, he said.

“The Newbury Park teams did a great job this year,” Rodriguez said. “They deserve all the recognition they can get.”

Publicity about girls’ softball has always been paltry compared to the attention given to boys’ organized baseball, said Mark Yamauchi, coach of Newbury Park’s older team. The day after the girls clinched their titles, a local newspaper carried a sports-page feature about the boys Little League all-star team above two brief stories written about the girls.

That is because people hold a misconception about the level of play in Bobby Sox leagues, Yamauchi said. His star pitcher, Stacie Beshore, used five different pitches to defeat Koolau, Hawaii 19-12 at the national tournament, he said.

Her fast ball reaches the mid-50 m.p.h. range, he said.

“These girls don’t play a wimpy game,” Yamauchi said. “Their level of play is very high.”

Player Heather Buchanan said boys are impressed when they come to watch the girls play.

“Sometimes guys think of girls’ sports as kind of lame,” said Heather, who plays third base. “Then they see Stacie pitching and they go, ‘Wow.’ ”

The younger Bobby Sox team clinched the national title after beating Tustin 3-2 and 8-3. It is the first time that Newbury Park’s younger team has brought home the national crown, Joyce said.

At a gathering Friday, the younger girls were nonchalant about their victory.

“We spent a lot of time practicing,” said Jennifer Dilley, 10, the youngest player on the team. “We worked well as a team.”

But the older girls were more assertive about what they had achieved.

“The boys deserve the coverage, but we do too,” Heather said. “We worked just as hard.”