Baseball Facilities, Skills Improving at St. Michael’s

The wind-swept baseball field at St. Michael’s Prep, on a mesa just above El Toro Road, is nothing to get excited about.

Right field is a ravine with a sharp drop behind first base that leads to tall grass where cattle sometimes graze. Left field is part gravel, part dirt with a few rocks. A new blacktop basketball court is a couple hundred feet down the left-field line, and the backstop is a rusty, battered tangle of chicken wire.

“The boys tell me they hate that field,” says Father Stephen Boyle, the school’s new baseball coach.

There is excitement and optimism at the all-boys boarding school nonetheless. The Pioneers are 3-1 and, after nearly a month without games, open Academy League play next Tuesday against Capistrano Valley Christian at Concordia University.

But make no mistake, this is not Mater Dei or Santa Margarita or Servite, other county Catholic schools where athletics are big-time. Located on a quiet, picturesque hillside overlooking Trabuco Canyon, St. Michael’s Abbey is believed to have the only remaining all-boys boarding school in the Western United States. About 60 high-school age boys live here during the week, taking classes from about 25 priests.

Many of the boys, including student body president Vimal Bhanvadia, 18, of Hacienda Heights, attend the school to escape troubled backgrounds.

“I was running with the wrong crowd,” said Bhanvadia, who has been at the school since eighth grade. “I got in some trouble and my parents sent me here.”

The 850-year-old Norbertine Order, which runs the school, combines monastic beliefs of Hungarian monks and traditional parish work of priests with emphasis on public prayer. Hungarian-born Father Hubert Szanto, the principal who will retire this spring, believes that sports at other parochial schools receive too much attention and, while noting the value of physical education, prefers that sports at St. Michael’s be less competitive.

Younger priests at St. Michael’s don’t want to build another Mater Dei, but many participated in high school sports while growing up in the United States. Father Gabriel Stack, for instance, who is the vice principaland is expected to replace Szanto in the fall, would like to see better athletic facilities and the school’s image with other high school teams improved.

Still, this is a boarding school first and foremost. The isolated location of the abbey, founded in 1961, adds to its mystique. Classes begin at 8 a.m. and end at 9 p.m. Students wear matching blazers or sweaters, ties, slacks and hard-soled shoes. They pray in the abbey church at least three times a day and there is no television. Priests are clothed in full-length white habits, a robe distinctive from other religious orders..

Many students look at baseball as a release from the regimentation of dormitory life, Bhanvadia said.

“There is a lot of stress for students at the school because of the lifestyle here,” he said.

Several years ago, St. Michael’s baseball team was so bad that the mercy rule was invoked in every game it played.

“The boys were so sad about that,” Boyle said. “Not because they were getting beaten so badly, but because the games ended so early and they wanted to play some more.”

A free period, roughly between 1 and 3 p.m., is the only time sports teams have to practice.

“There just wasn’t enough practice time to compete,” former Pioneer Coach Jack Dignan said. “Academics is absolutely the main reason the boys are there.”

Dignan resigned as baseball, basketball and cross-country coach last year after the last of his three sons graduated from St. Michael’s. Boyle, an assistant, was named athletic director. He also coaches basketball and cross-country.

Boyle, a three-sport high school standout in the late 1970s in Springfield, Minn., was named all-conference in basketball and was the school’s quarterback and a pitcher. An engaging man who is thin and wears glasses, Boyle appears much taller than the 6 feet 4 he professes to be. He entered the abbey two weeks after graduating from high school in 1980.

“Sports provide wholesome activities for boys, plus exposure for our school,” Boyle said. “But more important for us is not so much to win, but to be No. 1 in sportsmanship. Don’t get me wrong, I do like to win, but that is not the most important thing in athletics.”

This season, with renewed enthusiasm, the Pioneers are off to one of their best starts.

“Our three wins are three more wins than we had all of last year,” Boyle said. “And that’s half as many, I think, as we’ve had in the last 10 years.”

Just surviving on that practice field is a feat. Carved on the side of a hill, it is so bad that opponents refused to play there. St. Michael’s home games are played at El Toro Community Park.

“It was so uneven, that if you were on third base you could only see half of the first baseman,” Dignan said. “And you could never see the bag. Ground balls took bad hops. The field ran uphill.”

A couple of weeks ago a former student sent a big earth-mover to level the playing field. Boyle and other priests no longer have to drive a tractor mower to cut the knee-high winter grass, where boys often teased the priests by hiding in their paths. The abbey also purchased a $1,500 batting cage and an anonymous donor gave a used pitching machine.

The batting cage, built on a ridge next to the third base line, has been a big plus, although there are problems supplying power to the pitching machine from a portable generator.

“Before, every ball we hit went down the hill. It was awful,” Boyle said. “Now we can take a bag of balls in there and hit all day.”

The subtle upgrades at St. Michael’s are being monitored elsewhere.

“Boyle has really turned that program around in terms of his organization and the number of athletes,” Capistrano Valley Christian Coach Terry Gaunt said. “In the past, St. Michael’s just played for recreation. It didn’t matter to them whether they won or lost. That isn’t the case anymore.”

There are still problems to overcome. There are 16 players but only 13 uniforms.

“I didn’t want to cut anyone,” Boyle said. “So I have a group of 10 that dress out for each game and the others take turns sharing uniforms.”

But Boyle is full of optimism. Only six seniors and five juniors attend the school. Boyle has been excited to find a freshman left-handed pitcher and a sophomore catcher. Also back is second team all-league second baseman Fred Enciso, also a sophomore.

“I know pretty much what these boys can do,” Boyle said. “But what you get most times is just the luck of the draw. The kids just kind of fall in your lap.”

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St. Michael’s Prep

* Location: 19292 El Toro Rd., Portola Hills

* Student body: Four-year, all boys Catholic boarding academy

* Enrollment: 60 (includes eighth grade)

* Annual tuition: $5,000

* League: Academy

* Nickname: Pioneers

* High school founded: 1993

* Athletic Director: Fr. Stephen Boyle

* Sports offered: 3

* Baseball Coach: Fr. Stephen Boyle

* 1996 record: 3-10.

* Notes: Dropping eighth grade at end of school year, bringing maximum boarding capacity to 80 boys. Maintains intramural program. No plans to expand number of high school sports but is undergoing facilities design review that may lead to renovations and/or additions to athletic facilities.