Verbum Dei to Switch Leagues

In a major restructuring, the Catholic Athletic Assn. voted Wednesday to move Los Angeles Verbum Dei from the Santa Fe League to the Mission League for boys’ basketball only.

Effective with the 2006-2007 season, Verbum Dei will join an eight-team league that includes basketball powers Los Angeles Loyola and North Hollywood Harvard-Westlake.

“It feels great,” Verbum Dei Coach DeAnthony Langston said. The Eagles have routinely beaten their Santa Fe League opponents by 30 points or more.

The CAA also finalized its football leagues, with Loyola, La Puente Bishop Amat, Sherman Oaks Notre Dame and Encino Crespi forming a new four-team Division I league. Every two years, the last-place team can get relief by switching with the first-place team from the Division III Mission League.

-- Eric Sondheimer

Baseball

Mission Viejo Capistrano Valley didn’t get a hit until the fourth inning in the final of the Irvine/Big West tournament, but when the Cougars struck, they couldn’t be stopped.

Capistrano Valley, ranked fourth in the Southland by The Times, scored five runs in the fourth and four in the seventh to defeat No. 3 Riverside Poly, 9-4, at Windrow Park in Irvine.

The Bears (12-3) took a 4-0 lead on a three-run homer by designated hitter Hector Rabago in the first inning and a run-scoring triple by Alec Roldan in the second.

Capistrano Valley starter Matt Hiserman (4-0) then settled down and retired 12 in a row before he was struck in the face by a line drive off the bat of Nicholas Chiodini. Hiserman, a junior right-hander, left under his own power and was taken to Mission Regional Hospital with a possible concussion.

“I’m the biggest advocate of wooden bats,” Capistrano Valley Coach Bob Zamora said.

Doug Blum had three hits and drove in a run to lead the Cougars (14-1-1).

-- Dan Arritt

Outfielder Nick Akins of Woodland Hills El Camino Real has been suspended for the rest of the season for his part in a scuffle in the opposing team’s dugout during a game Saturday, according to school administrators.

Akins’ father went into the Sun Valley Poly dugout to confront coaches after his son was hit by a pitch, and Akins followed him. Akins, a junior, transferred from Los Angeles High and had been granted a hardship waiver by the City Section, clearing him to play this season.

-- Eric Sondheimer

Softball

The injury to Cierra Garcia, a freshman catcher who fractured the tip of her middle finger on her throwing hand during a travel ball practice on April 3, seemed to shake the confidence of her Diamond Bar team, which lost five games last week.

Garcia, who is expected to sit out two to four weeks, has been replaced in the lineup by freshman Jennifer Seidler.

“It’s a gamble these kids take when they’re out there with their travel ball teams,” Diamond Bar Coach Robert Garcia-Uyemura said.

It has been an up-and-down season for the Brahmas, who had only two starters back from last year’s team, including pitcher Brittany La Rosa. They lost their first four games, being outscored, 22-3. They then won five in a row, giving up only two runs, to win the Santa Maria Righetti Best of the West tournament.

Last week, they were outscored, 22-8, in Sierra League losses to Glendora St. Lucy’s, Glendora and Chino Hills Ayala, and a nonleague doubleheader sweep by Santa Ana Foothill.

Struggles continued Tuesday, when the Brahmas lost a league game at Chino, 3-0. They will play host to the Cowboys on Friday.

“We lost all the momentum we gained at Righetti,” Garcia-Uyemura said. “The kids believed in themselves, and now we have to start all over.”

-- Martin Henderson