It’s Pivotal Week at West Torrance

Harry Jenkins, baseball coach at West Torrance, jokes that this is the week nobody talks to him at school. That’s because Jenkins teaches at Redondo, a team the Warriors play twice this week for first place in the Bay League.

Jenkins is one of the most well-respected coaches in the South Bay, sending his teams at West Torrance and Redondo to the playoffs in 30 of his 32 seasons. He is closing in on 650 wins.

He goes for No. 645 at 3:15 p.m. today at West Torrance. More important, a victory would move the Warriors (15-6, 5-2 in league) atop the league standings with another game Friday at Redondo (13-6, 6-2).

“It’s kind of a showdown this week,’” said Jenkins, who coached at Redondo from 1970 to 1988. “This is the only week I’m not a [Redondo] Sea Hawk.”

West Torrance has been led on the mound by senior John Dunn, 7-2 with a 1.79 earned-run average.

Junior outfielder Matt Roquemore leads the team with a .424 batting average; junior catcher Tony Asaro is batting .393 with a team-high five home runs and 27 RBIs, and sophomore outfielder James Haas -- a future professional prospect, according to Jenkins -- is batting .348 with a team-high 22 runs scored.

-- Dan Arritt

Softball

Nicole Churnock doubled home the tying run and later scored on Cristen Lee’s ground ball, and a subsequent error, to help Fullerton Rosary defeat Santa Ana Mater Dei, 9-8, in a 10-inning Serra League game Tuesday at Clark Park.

The 20th-ranked Royals (14-7, 3-1) pulled even with the third-ranked Monarchs (16-3-2, 3-1) in the league race, a half-game behind Bishop Amat (15-5, 4-1). Taylor Peyton had a two-run single in the bottom of the seventh to extend the game to extra innings. Katie Chifcian had two hits, two runs and three RBIs for Rosary.

-- Karl Peterson

Miscellany

The Southern Section Council is expected to decide whether to give delegates flexibility in voting on a watershed state marketing plan when it meets at 9 a.m. on Thursday at The Grand in Long Beach.

The section’s Executive Council suggested to the council last week that it send representatives “uninstructed” to the May 9 vote at the state Federated Council meeting in Santa Clara.

Section leaders generally favor the new marketing proposal, reached over the course of more than a year of sometimes intense negotiations between the state office in Oakland and representatives of the 10 geographic sections.

A section spokesman said sending delegates uninstructed allowed them the freedom to make a few minor revisions that the section believed would enhance the bill in its favor before it reached the floor for final approval in Santa Clara.

The council is also expected to go along with the Executive Council’s recommendation and approve a $10 per team fee for each school beginning in the fall. The fee would be an addition to the 23 cents-per-student fees each school already pays and would help make up a projected section deficit of $80,000.

-- Paul McLeod

Track and Field

It turns out that senior pole vaulters Clay Johnson and Monica Pacas of Atascadero did not jump as high as previously reported in a Pac-5 League dual meet Thursday at Santa Maria Righetti.

Johnson, the son of 1972 Olympic pole vault bronze medalist Jan Johnson and the brother of collegiate women’s record-holder Chelsea Johnson of UCLA, and Pacas were credited with clearing heights of 16 feet 5 inches and 13-4 in the meet, which would lead the state this year.

However, further review of the video of their vaults has led Jan Johnson to conclude that the heights were incorrect.

“When we looked at the video, things didn’t look quite right,” Jan Johnson said of the standards and crossbar. “My best estimate now is that Clay jumped somewhere between 15-10 and 16-2 and Monica jumped somewhere between 12-10 and 13-2. But we’re probably never going to know for sure.”

Because of the inaccuracies, the state leading marks will now fall to Matt Contreras of Los Angeles Loyola and Dustin Deleo of Los Alamitos (16-2) for the boys and Whitney Johnson of Mission Viejo (12-8) for the girls.

-- John Ortega