Diamond Girls : Little League ‘Quake Kids’ aren’t the only inspiration this summer

By the time Northridge’s “Earthquake Kids” had gotten around to tournament play this past summer, much had happened to inspire unusual interest in the Little League World Series. The baseball strike had firmly taken hold. That dumped untold millions of fans into early withdrawal symptoms, the depths of which we are only beginning to comprehend. Los Angeles was also desperate for something to cheer about. And the kids, after all, were from Northridge, the epicenter of the nation’s costliest natural disaster.

For the boys, then, there were such anomalies as the “Umpcam,” limousines, proclamations and even an appearance on the Leno show.

But the boys were hardly the only champions strutting their stuff on our region’s diamonds. In fact, if the strike had occurred a few weeks earlier, a couple of girls teams from the Santa Clarita Valley might have been given a lot more notice. In some ways, their accomplishments were just as impressive, and as compelling, as that of the boys.

The William S. Hart softball team for girls 10 and under, managed by Sandy Parkes, earned honors as the ASA Western District champions and as the ASA Pacific Coast Region champions. They also went to the Kansas City National Invitational tournament and won there by a combined score of 62 to 1.

Manager Scott Evans says that two members of his squad, the William S. Hart team for girls 12 and under, lost homes in the earthquake. Still, they managed to pull together to win their third consecutive Southwest Area national tournament, beating the best from California, Hawaii, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Colorado.

In our quake-scarred and baseball-starved region, those were accomplishments worthy of applause.