Fielding Funds

Powered by hot pitching, solid defense and a newly won $5,000 grant from the City Council, a group of Newbury Park softball players is heading to Colorado for a national tournament next week.

The tournament, and the unexpected windfall of city support, have topped off a memorable year for the 16-and-younger all-star team.

Recruited mainly from teams in the Newbury Park Girls Softball Assn., a recreational league, the squad finished the tournament season with a 9-2 record and placed fifth in the Southern California region.

The team calls itself Newbury Park, after the community and league it represents.

Pitcher K.C. Robertson was one of the players who weathered a late-night City Council meeting to help secure key funding.

“I wasn’t expecting to get this far,” said 13-year-old K.C.

“I couldn’t yell or anything, because I was on TV [at the council meeting], but I would have,” she said. “I’m very excited.”

The city grant will help pay the approximately $13,000 it will cost for the 13 players, three coaches and one chaperon to attend the Aug. 5 tournament in the Denver suburb of Aurora.

Thanks to hours of footwork by many of its young players, the team has already raised more than $7,000 from corporate sponsors, parents and others.

The team is traveling to the Southwest Regional Championship, the equivalent of a national championship for the Western region.

The tournament is the Newbury Park Girls Softball Assn.’s first championship berth in the Amateur Softball Assn., a nationwide organization with more than 260,000 teams in a variety of age groups.

The tournament is highly competitive.

“You have to be pretty damn good,” said D. Stephen Monson, ASA Southern California commissioner. “It’s a major deal.”

For first-base player Jaymee Ortiz, the tournament trip will be her first time in Colorado and her first time on an airplane. It’s also the 14-year-old’s first shot at a national tournament, something that she said is not worrying her.

“I have confidence in our team,” Jaymee said. “I’m hoping that we go far.”

Coach Paul Garziano said he also has high hopes for the team. The fundamentals--defense, hitting, pitching--are all there, he said.

“Part of what I’m going to work on now is the mental game,” he said. “They’ve got to see in their mind’s eye that they can win this.”

The team was not always in championship form.

Hand-picked from recreation teams and by word-of-mouth, the team was a mishmash of personalities when it was formed in June. In the beginning, parents and coaches say, it was hampered by tensions on and off the field.

“When we first saw this team when the season started, we thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, will this ever end?’ ” said Phyllis Sparks, mother of Sandra Ortiz, 16, and Jaymee. “They weren’t gelling.”

Garziano smiled at the thought of the team’s early days and how far it has come.

“Any time you put 13 to 15 girls together, you’re going to have some personality conflicts,” he said. “You don’t see how it’s going to work out until you get into a game situation.”

When the games came around, Garziano said, so did the team.

“It completely turned around for us in the Ventura tournament,” he said. “During that tournament, 13 girls showed up to play. And they wanted it.”

The Newbury Park team won four straight games in the Ventura Regional All-Star Tournament, placing first.

Sparks, who played softball when she was young, said team members have a fighting spirit. “They never just lay down,” she said.

“They bang right back. We’ve won many games that way, because they come back,” she said. “They never quit.”

The Newbury Park team includes Christine Chambers, Jennifer Feistel, Vanessa Feistel, Karlie Garziano, Lauren Hulbert, Casey Isgrigg, Aubrey Mauricio, Alissa McArthur, Melissa Mastracco, Jessie McGihon, Sandra Ortiz, Jaymee Ortiz and K.C. Robertson.