Even a Bad Break Can’t Slow La Quinta’s Baseball Team

The La Quinta baseball team, ranked third in Orange County, beat 10th-ranked Los Amigos, 4-1, to clinch its seventh consecutive Garden Grove League title last week.

Success isn’t foreign to the Aztecs, who won Southern Section titles in 1994 and ’95. La Quinta was a combined 78-14 from 1996-98.

Although the Aztecs’ winning tradition hasn’t produced a flood of participation, they find ways to win. . . . even short-handed.

With only 11 players on its varsity--only 10 each on the JV and freshman squads--an injury forced La Quinta to finish a game with only eight players April 30.

La Quinta (23-1, 10-0) rallied to defeat Pacifica, 15-7, but the Aztecs had only eight players for the final 4 1/2 innings after pitcher Steve Lee broke his wrist in a home-plate collision. That and early substitutions left La Quinta Coach Dave Demarest with no options.

“We played two in the outfield,” said Demarest, “and we had them play in the gaps. With eight players, we outscored Pacifica, 12-1, but people are giving me way too much credit.

“Pacifica hit three or four drives into the gaps that we wouldn’t have caught if we had nine players. And the one run they got was on a home run over the fence. We were fortunate.”

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Woodbridge softball Coach Alan Dugard had high praise for his pitcher, Tracy Alcaraz (18-7), after the Warriors won their 17th consecutive league title Friday with a 2-0 victory against sixth-ranked El Toro.

Alcaraz had to replace the county’s all-time winningest pitcher, Christy Robitaille, who had 86 victories over four seasons before embarking on a career at Cal State Fullerton. Though Woodbridge (19-9, 7-0) got off to an 8-1 start, the Warriors then lost lost seven of nine games.

“She never lost her focus this season,” Dugard said of Alcaraz, a senior. “She’d lose a game and be disappointed, but she never asked, ‘Why me?’ She just came back for the next game and threw her heart out.”

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Starting opposite hitter Zach Wells of Newport Harbor has left the boys’ volleyball team because of conflicting time commitments, Newport Harbor Coach Dan Glenn said.

Wells, who is also a standout soccer goalkeeper who will play at UCLA next season, cited commitments to his Olympic Development Program soccer team and school work as reasons to leave the team, Glenn said.

Glenn granted Wells a two-week leave from the team, during the middle of the season, so he could play in a youth national soccer tournament in South America. But the overlapping schedule became too taxing.

“It was a mutual decision,” Glenn said. “There are no hard feelings. It was tough for everyone because he’s a great kid and he helps us out. But we can’t have someone there part-time, especially at the end of the season.”

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Markus Pineyro, a junior from Orange, made a splash at the Century League boys’ swimming finals when he won the JV 200 freestyle in 1 minute 46.85 seconds, some 18 seconds ahead of the second-place finisher.

The winning time in the varsity 200 freestyle was 1:48.01.

Pineyro, a transfer student from Mexico, is ineligible to compete at the varsity level this season.

“He got into school a month too late,” Orange swimming Coach Jeff Gorman said. “He’s a national-team level swimmer in Mexico.”

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When the boys’ volleyball playoff pairings are announced today by the Southern Section office Santa Margarita will not be among the teams in the field.

Santa Margarita won the Division I title last season. Although the Eagles (10-9, 4-7) were ranked sixth in the county last week, they finished in a three-way tie for third in one of the section’s toughest leagues, the Sea View, and lost a third-place playoff to El Toro. El Toro also defeated Irvine in a playoff to earn the league’s final berth.

“It’s disappointing,” Santa Margarita Coach Eddie Rapp said. “This is a tough one for us and Irvine. Our CIF was our league season. We had our chances.”

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Staff writer Martin Henderson contributed to this report.