After Starting in Slow Motion, Rio Mesa Moves to Fast Forward

After a slow start, Rio Mesa High has stormed to a first-place tie in the Channel League baseball standings.

After a slow start, the Spartans have won eight games in a row and are 13-4, 6-2 in league play.

After a slow . . . enough already. Coach Rich Duran has grown tired of that refrain.

In nine seasons as head coach, his Spartans always seem to stumble out of the gate. Last year, Rio Mesa was 3-4 before rampaging to the league title, the team’s fifth under Duran.

The Spartans won 18 of their last 21 games in 1994 to earn a berth in the Southern Section Division II semifinals.

With high expectations in ‘95, the Spartans again struggled, losing four of their first nine and two of four league games. But after a 7-0 defeat by Ventura, Rio Mesa hasn’t lost in nearly a month, scoring at least 10 runs in six of the eight victories and outscoring the opposition, 82-25.

“It’s been a pattern for nine years here,” Duran said. “We generally don’t start too quick. We’re about .500 after the first six games or so.”

But the team gathers momentum as the season progresses, Duran said, because of what the coach proudly calls one of the most-intense practice schedules around. The highly regimented three- to four-hour sessions are conducted every day throughout the season, no matter what the results on the field.

Duran has a simple credo: If you don’t have gifted players, you need to work on fundamentals. If you do have gifted players, you need to work on fundamentals.

“Our practices are very demanding,” he said. “Our kids work tremendously hard and they’re not done working. You have to get in as many quality (repetitions of drills) as you can every day.

“Our kids seem to look forward to them. They’d probably yell at me if I we didn’t have intense practices.”

Junior pitcher Manuel Chavira doesn’t know about that but admits the practices are instrumental to the team’s success.

“They are really intense and we go over the little things again and again,” he said. “But they’re fun. Fun and intense at the same time.”

Chavira has played a key role in the team’s success, becoming the No. 1 pitcher after Richard Soliz was injured nearly four weeks ago. Chavira is 6-1 with an 0.98 earned-run average and also leads the team with a .432 batting average.

Duran knew Chavira would be a special player after his varsity debut last year as a sophomore. In a nonleague game against Hart, Chavira entered the game with the bases loaded and proceeded to strike out the heart of the lineup, getting all three Indians looking on 3-and-2 curveballs.

“The greatest thing about that game was he had the confidence to throw his curveball,” Duran said. “He came into the game in a tough situation but he had this big grin on his face. He’s always grinning.”

Now that the first part of the season is over, the same can be said for the entire team.

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Soliz was the ace last season with an 8-1 record and 1.53 ERA. But the senior left-hander is just 2-1 this season and has not thrown a baseball since suffering a pinched nerve in his neck during a lose to Ventura on March 28.

After weeks of therapy and rest, he might begin throwing Monday and said he could be ready to pitch by the end of the week. Surprisingly, the team started winning right after he was injured.

“It’s been very frustrating sitting in the dugout, but I’m glad the team is doing well,” he said. “I think the team came closer together and knew they had to work harder when I got hurt.

“The team will do even better when I get back.”

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The county’s most surprising player this year is probably Jack Wilson, a scrappy junior second baseman at Thousand Oaks.

No better than an average player on the freshman and junior varsity teams the past two seasons, he began the week as the Valley-area’s leading hitter with a .600 batting average.

Even after going three for eight in two games to lower his average to .566 (30 for 53), he ended the week with a bang. On Friday, Wilson launched a two-out, game-winning home run in the bottom of the seventh to beat Royal, 5-4. It was his first home run.

“I hit the ball into the parking lot over the left-field fence and I had never done that before, not even in batting practice,” Wilson said.

And when he points out that he has more hits this season (30) than he had in his first two seasons combined, he seems as amazed as anyone by his success.

When asked to explain it, he talks about bat speed and making contact and improved hitting mechanics, but don’t believe him. The real reason is Star Wars.

Before each game, Wilson slips the soundtrack to the George Lucas movie into his compact disc player in his car for a 20-minute visualization session.

“I play the music real low and see myself hitting the ball every which way,” Wilson said. “It’s kinda weird but it seems to be working.”

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Dan Smith, Ventura’s veteran baseball coach, admits he has little hair to lose but is offering it all to his players.

When the Cougars realized last month that they would play cross-town rival Buena an unprecedented four times this season, they asked Smith if they could shave his head if they won all four.

“I said sure because I thought it would never happen,” Smith said.

But the shearing is set for Monday after Ventura knocked off Buena, 4-2, on Friday to sweep the series that included meetings in the Westside and BuenaVentura tournaments and two Channel League games.

In two seasons, Ventura has won six of seven cross-town meetings, which makes the hair loss easier for Smith to accept.

“I guess I’ll have the monk look,” he said.