Left-Right Combo a Knockout : Reseda (18-0) Floors Opponents With Its One-Two Pitching Punch of Righty Rebbeck (9-0) and Southpaw Yeatts (9-0)

On the first day of softball practice at Reseda High this season, Coach Glory Jue discovered she had a pitching problem.

Pitching problems are not new to Jue or any other coach in the City Section. But Glory found this particular problem, well, glorious.

In a league where good fast-pitch hurlers seem to be an endangered species, Jue has two--right-hander Kristy Rebbeck and left-hander Rosie Yeatts.

With both players having the potential to be named Valley Pac-8 Conference most valuable player, Jue’s only solution was to give them equal time.

Rebbeck, a sophomore, is 9-0 with an 0.88 earned-run average. Yeatts, a junior, is 9-0 with an 0.78 ERA.

Both have nine starts and seven complete games. Each has pitched 63 innings.

Reseda (18-0), which opens the City 4-A playoffs Thursday after a first-round bye, has its best team in school history.

The Regents are seeded second behind defending 4-A champion El Camino Real (18-1) and appear destined for a showdown with the Conquistadores.

“It’s amazing,” Jue said. “I really didn’t know what do in the beginning. So I just decided to split their time. And look how they’ve done. You’ve probably never seen this.”

Rebbeck has 56 strikeouts while allowing 28 hits, nine runs and eight earned runs.

Yeatts has 55 strikeouts while allowing 24 hits, 10 runs and seven earned runs.

“They’re both really incredible,” said Jenaye Brown, who has been Yeatts’ catcher mate since they were 10. “They have a lot of confidence in themselves.”

Neither pitcher minds sharing mound duty with the other.

“It’s fine with me,” Yeatts said. “If I were better, that would be different. But we’re pretty much even.”

Said Rebbeck, “I like it. I think I’d be bored just pitching. I like playing shortstop. I also know if something goes wrong--like they’re hitting off me--Rosie can come in.”

So far, Rebbeck hasn’t needed the help. She has four of the Regents’ five shutouts. Playing shortstop when Yeatts pitches, Rebbeck has committed only one error in 37 chances for a team-best .974 fielding percentage.

It is not just the pitching that has brought Reseda its first league championship. The Regents have made only 27 errors, an average of 1.5 per game. They’ve allowed only 19 runs in 18 games while scoring 149, an average of 8.3.

And with five players batting over .300, Rebbeck and Yeatts are hesitant to take credit for Reseda’s unprecedented success.

“We’ve got a team behind us,” Yeatts said.

But Rebbeck and Yeatts have made Reseda the envy of the Valley Pac-8, where it is common to see inexperienced pitchers lobbing the ball across the plate.

“If you don’t have good pitching, you don’t have a team,” Sylmar Chuck Miller said. “You might score seven or eight runs, but the other team might score 10, 12. And the girls feel very frustrated because the other team hits the ball all over the field.”

Miller, whose Spartans were defending Valley Pac-8 champions, has two capable pitchers--Cherise Espinosa (8-5, 1.47 ERA) and Jennifer Brown (2-5, 3.04 ERA). But Sylmar, in two games against Reseda, could not beat either Rebbeck or Yeatts, the two best pitchers in the conference.

“It’s a great situation to have,” Miller said. “Reseda’s got hitting, too, but they’d be an average team without their pitchers.”

For Jue, who previously coached the Regents from 1982-92 and returned this season from a two-year hiatus, Rebbeck and Yeatts were a sight for sore eyes.

Since the softball program started in the 1971-72 school year, Reseda has had few winning teams, had never won a league title and reached the playoffs only five times.

“We never had the pitching,” Jue said. “One year we made it to the playoffs when we had a pitcher who threw with a high arc. We lost in the first round.”

Even last year, with Yeatts and Rebbeck pitching, the Regents faltered after an 8-0 start, finishing 10-6 and losing in the second round of the playoffs.

“We had the same pitchers last year, but this is new,” Jenaye Brown said. “Something’s changed, and I don’t know what it is.”

Here’s a hint: last summer Rebbeck and Yeatts became more serious.

Both were playing on traveling teams and were exposed to a much-higher level of competition than school ball. Neither was deemed good enough to pitch.

Rebbeck faced financial obstacles. The expense of traveling long distances, sometimes out of state, with her team meant she couldn’t afford a pitching coach. She was relegated to No. 3 in the rotation of the Valley Breeze, a 16-and-under team.

But now Rebbeck is getting money from sponsors, and last Sunday she had her first lesson with Samantha Ford, who pitched at UCLA.

“I plan to get a full-ride scholarship,” said Rebbeck, who would be the first Regent to do so if Yeatts doesn’t get there first.

“She’s always on, and her head’s always in the game,” Jenaye Brown said of Rebbeck. “And when we’re warming up, she takes it serious. She’s improved so much.”

Yeatts was told by a coach that she wasn’t good enough to pitch last summer for California Stealth, a 16-and-under team that placed third in the national tournament. She had pitched since age 10.

Yeatts briefly quit pitching after her coach’s vote of no-confidence.

“It hurt my feelings,” Yeatts said. “Then I decided to prove him wrong. And I think I have.”

El Camino Real pitcher Tami Jones, who also played with Stealth, applauds Yeatts’ success.

“I’m not surprised with what she’s doing,” Jones said. “She throws hard. It helps a lot that she’s a lefty, because her curveball comes right in on a right-handed hitter. I wish I was a lefty.”

Reseda’s success this season can be traced in part to the Mid-Valley Girls’ Softball League, the unofficial second home of the Yeatts family.

Rosie and her sisters--Deana, a 1989 Reseda graduate and three-sport standout, and Stephanie, a freshman next year--came out of that league.

Rosie’s father, David Yeatts, is a driving force behind the 15-year-old league.

The nucleus of Reseda’s team is made up of these current and former Mid-Valley players:

--Jenaye Brown, a junior, .382 batting average, 26 runs, 11 runs batted in, 21 stolen bases.

--Brenda Lomeli, a senior, .357, 16 runs, four triples, 15 RBIs.

--Gabriella Lopez, a freshman, 15 stolen bases.

--Jayme Rebbeck, a senior, .304, 17 runs, 10 RBIs, Kristy’s sister.

--Rosie Yeatts, .355, 16 runs, seven doubles, two triples, 25 RBIs, 14 stolen bases.

Kristy Rebbeck, who played youth softball in a different league, is batting .345 with 26 runs, five doubles, 14 RBIs and 14 stolen bases.

Could the Mid-Valley league serve as a feeder program that would make Reseda strong for years to come?

David Yeatts says yes, but the league faces obstacles in recruiting players. Local schools have not cooperated.

“We take fliers out to the junior high schools and you know what they do with them? They set them on the office counter,” he said. “But they always pass out the Little League fliers. It’s really aggravating to us.

“We’re the only softball league in our part of the valley. We’re really working on developing players. We have clinics for the players, and I give coaching clinics to the coaches.”

Kristy Rebbeck is not so sure the Regents will remain strong.

“This is the team--this year, right now,” she said. “After me and Rosie leave, we won’t have the pitching.”

Right now Reseda is undefeated, and its players believe it can finish that way.

“I don’t want to jinx it or anything,” Rosie Yeatts said. “I think we’re good enough.”

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Left-Right Combo

The statistics of Reseda High softball pitchers Kristy Rebbeck, a sophomore right-hander, and Rosie Yeatts, a junior left-hander, are virtually mirror images. Comparing the two:

G CG IP H SO BB R ER W L ERA Kristy Rebbeck 9 7 63 28 56 6 9 8 9 0 0.88 Rosie Yeatts 9 7 63 24 55 11 10 7 9 0 0.78