They Play Numbers Game
It’s never easy to field a team at Lee Vining High, the smallest school in the Southern Section with an enrollment of 19 students this year.
Funny thing, though, the town known as the gateway to Yosemite National Park has a high school baseball team this season, 12 players in all, five girls among them.
There are usually fewer than 30 students at Lee Vining, making athletics a minor part of the school.
“In rural leagues like we’re in, that’s always a problem,” Principal Frank Romero said. “We just don’t have that many kids to draw from. If I field a baseball team, I can’t field a track team. We do one or the other.”
Romero lines the field with chalk on game days and the team is coached by a school mechanic, apropos examples of the various duties school employees hold in the rustic town of 370.
Some students’ parents work in the town’s largest industry, a pumice plant that turns the abundant frothy volcanic rock into abrasive cleaners and polishes. Other parents have been hiking instructors at Yosemite, trout-fishing guides at nearby June Lake or ski instructors at Mammoth Mountain.
The cold winter hasn’t help the baseball team. Lee Vining didn’t play a home game until two weeks ago because snow had covered its field.
The road isn’t much friendlier, win or lose.
The Tigers play in the Hi-Lo League, a long-distance network of small schools in mostly rural towns. One of the teams, the Academy for Academic Excellence in Apple Valley, is a six-hour drive from Lee Vining. Other schools in the Hi-Lo League include Death Valley Academy and Owens Valley in Independence.
“When you’re talking about playing an away game in a rural league, you really go away,” Romero said.
While most Southern Section schools play about 20 to 25 games per season, Lee Vining will play nine. There are no nonleague games, only a nine-game league schedule.
When Coach Dan LaRue was contacted for an interview, he said he couldn’t talk because he was busy. Not with game-planning, scouting or stat-crunching.
“I’m underneath a school bus,” he said. “I need to get this thing back on the road. You caught me at a bad time.”
Later, LaRue said the season has been interesting, at the very least.
“It’s different, no question about it,” he said. “When we travel I need to get chaperons for the girls’ locker room. We don’t have much pitching ... we only have three and that’s it. We didn’t get any practice games. But hey, it’s fun. What the heck.”
The Tigers (0-2) will almost surely lose more games than they win. Their first game was a 28-2 loss to Big Pine. Their second game was a 16-0 loss to the Academy for Academic Excellence.
Some players had never picked up a bat until last month. It’s been an experience.
“I was going to quit because I got hit by the ball on my lip,” said Joana Gonzalez, a sophomore. “I was actually playing third base and the pitcher made a move to third. The ball tipped my mitt and hit my lips.
“It’s been pretty hard. We’re trying though.”
Next year, about 15 students are expected to enroll as freshmen, a “bumper crop,” Romero said. There’s talk the Tigers might field an eight-man football team and a girls’ volleyball team in the fall.
Until then, the baseball team will be the only team in town.
“It’s really kind of fun to see them out there together,” Romero said.
“We don’t necessarily always do well, but they have a great time.”
*
Huntington Beach Ocean View played only two games last week, a pedestrian number compared to the previous week -- seven games in six days at two tournaments in two states during the school’s spring break.
The Seahawks were 3-1 at the Palm Desert tournament and 2-1 at the Las Vegas Bishop Gorman tournament. All told, Ocean View played 53 innings, used nine pitchers and had two pitchers throw the maximum 10 innings in one week.
“We thought we had a big enough squad this year and enough pitching to pull it off,” Coach Steve Barrett said. “We thought we’d be able to survive it and have some fun. We came back in one piece.”
The Seahawks (17-3) played in the Palm Desert tournament before continuing on to Las Vegas. They gave up 11 runs to Sylmar but held other opponents in check, giving up only 19 runs in their other six games. Their No. 1 pitcher, Phil Hann, threw only four innings.
“It was fun,” Barrett said, “but I don’t know if we’ll try it again.”
*
Camarillo Coach Scott Cline, who is resigning at the end of the season, decided it was time to protect some assets.
Cline said Delmon Young will not pitch again this season because the senior developed tendinitis in his right shoulder after only two appearances. Young, expected to be a high pick in the June draft, will only play in the outfield for Camarillo, the position he is projected to play as a pro.
“He’s worth so much money there’s no way a high school coach should ever get him hurt,” Cline said. “He’s going to be a multimillionaire in about a month. He and I talked and we decided it was time to shut him down.”
Young, hitting .538 with 19 runs batted in, pitched eight innings and was 1-0 with a save and a 2.63 earned-run average. He struck out 13, walked one and gave up four hits. He eased into pitching this season after sitting out nearly a month because of a severely sprained ankle.
The Scorpions (15-3) have won 15 consecutive games and will rely on a committee of five pitchers the rest of the way.
“Delmon throws 94-96 [mph] and has three pitches,” Cline said. “Teams aren’t going to fear us as much knowing they won’t have to face him, but I have confidence in our other pitchers.”
*
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
EXTRA BASES
HIGHLIGHTS
* Jared Clark of Valencia had a game-winning run-scoring single in the bottom of the seventh and pitched a one-hitter in a 2-1 victory over Newhall Hart.
* Camarillo had six consecutive two-out singles and scored four runs in the fifth inning of a 6-5 victory over Lakewood.
HEROICS
* Robert Palmer’s two-run single and Chad Tracy’s three-run home run were part of Claremont’s six-run seventh inning in a 10-8 upset of Upland.
ON DECK
* Huntington Beach Edison gets a chance to prove it deserves the No. 3 ranking with two Sunset League games against No. 9 Huntington Beach Marina: Wednesday at Marina and Friday at Edison.
Mike Bresnahan
