Santa Margarita in Tenuous Spot

It will be a long off-season for Santa Margarita if it doesn’t qualify for the Southern Section Division I baseball playoffs.

Along with six consecutive defeats, the Eagles, 15-10 overall and 6-5 in the Serra League, have lost their three-game lead in league. If they drop their final regular-season game to fourth-place Bellflower St. John Bosco (13-12, 5-6), they will tie for third in the league with the Braves and miss the playoffs. The Braves defeated Santa Margarita, 4-1, Monday.

That would be a tough ending for Coach Mike Borowski, who is moving to Northern Idaho next month to join his wife, Yvette, a salesperson for a financial services company who relocated three weeks ago.

“We’re going up there with the idea of slowing down a little bit,” said Borowski, in his fifth season as head coach at Santa Margarita and 14th overall.

Borowski, who also has coached football at Santa Margarita, plans to resume teaching and suspects he’ll get back into coaching, though he doesn’t expect a head position to be waiting for him when he arrives.

“I don’t have a problem being an assistant coach, whatsoever,” he said.

Borowski said he had a good feeling after interviewing with the school district there. “The superintendent is a part-time Phillies scout,” he said.

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Riverside Arlington (7-17, 5-8) needs to beat Riverside King (14-9, 7-6) today and Thursday in order to qualify for the Southern Section playoffs and gain a chance to defend its Division I title. The Lions beat King, 3-2, on March 31.

Simi Valley, the 2004 champion in Division II, and Anaheim Katella, which won the Division III title last season, have already been eliminated from playoff contention.

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Valencia helped its playoff chances in a big way Friday. The Vikings (14-11, 8-5) scored 15 runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to break open a 4-4 tie with Newhall Hart and went on to win, 19-6, to move into a second-place tie with Canyon Country Canyon in the Foothill League.

“It was unbelievable,” Coach Jared Snyder said. “It just became a hit-fest.”

Hart (14-8-1, 7-5), which was ranked No. 1 in the Southland by The Times earlier this season, dropped to fourth in league. The Indians can still qualify for the playoffs if they sweep three games from last-place Burbank this week, and Canyon (12-11, 8-5) loses at least one its two games against first-place Saugus.

-- Dan Arritt

Softball

Newbury Park won 13 in a row, making it one of the hottest teams in the Southland, but the Panthers’ winning streak ended Saturday when they forfeited two games in the Thousand Oaks tournament.

Newbury Park (15-8) was in the lower-level White division and was not competing for the same title that was eventually won by Simi Valley Royal over Long Beach Millikan, 3-2, in eight innings.

The prom, SAT and injuries to junior varsity pitchers “would have devastated our team,” said Newbury Park Coach Darrin Carr, so the Panthers pulled out of the tournament’s second weekend.

None of which takes away from what the Panthers have accomplished on the field, where they have Marmonte League victories over Simi Valley Royal, Thousand Oaks and Westlake Village Westlake. Newbury Park has six players batting .300 or better.

Although junior Lindsay Cunningham was supposed to pitch this season, she tore a knee ligament during soccer season, “which meant Tiffany [Curtis] had to carry the load, and she’s done a tremendous job,” Carr said. Curtis, a junior, has an earned-run average of 1.04.

The other half of the battery, senior Caitlin Dailey, is batting .450 with 13 runs and 22 runs batted in and has allowed only three stolen bases. “She threw out Monica Gonzalez of Westlake twice, and she’s as good a baserunner as you’ll see,” Carr said.

First baseman Vaiolini Gago, a junior, is batting .354 with 17 stolen bases in 18 attempts and has scored 13 runs.

City Section playoffs begin today with San Pedro, Woodland Hills El Camino Real, Carson and Wilmington Banning holding the top four spots in the 32-team field. All but El Camino Real are from the Marine League.

San Pedro has won the last five titles, and Carson has been runner-up the last six years. San Pedro’s coach, Tony Dobra, said he likes the 32-team format in which first-round winners play for the Championship division title, and first-round losers play for the Invitational title.

“Back when we had two 16-team playoffs, when you try to pick numbers 14, 15, 16, some of those guys were less than honest about how good they were,” Dobra said. “If you could be No. 17, you were then the No. 1 seed in the Invitational.

“Everyone seems to like it this way. You can seed more honestly.”

-- Martin Henderson

Golf

Murrieta Valley shot even-par 360 at Yucaipa Valley Golf Club to win the Desert Divisional and post the low score of the Southern Section playoffs Monday. The Nighthawks were led by Rickie Fowler and Josh Anderson, each of whom had a three-under-par 69.

Seven of eight divisionals were played Monday, with Torrance the biggest upset victim with a fifth-place finish in the Western Divisional. Only the top two teams from each divisional advance to the section championship on Thursday at PGA of Southern California Golf Club in Beaumont.

Diving

Ventura Buena senior Dwight Dumais can distinguish himself even among his own family of top-flight divers by winning the Southern Section Division I championship for the third time in four years today at Marguerite Recreation Center in Mission Viejo.

Dumais, who won last year’s title with 602.25 points, is aiming for brother Troy’s section-record total of 701.65 points, set in 1997.

Absent from today’s Division I girls’ meet will be defending champion Tory Ishimatsu, who won the title as a freshman at Los Alamitos last year but is currently in an independent-study program through Mission Viejo Futures and has not entered the competition.

-- Lauren Peterson

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

THE TIMES’ RANKINGS

DAN ARRITT’S BASEBALL RANKINGS

*--* Rk Team Rec. Div. LW 1 RIVERSIDE POLY 20-3 Div. I 1 2 CHATSWORTH 25-2 City 3 3 SAUGUS 21-3 Div. I 4 4 NORCO 19-4-1 Div. I 5 5 CAPISTRANO VALLEY 19-4-1 Div. I 9 6 EL CAMINO REAL 22-6 City 2 7 ESPERANZA 17-7 Div. I 7 8 MATER DEI 19-8 Div. I 13 9 AGOURA 18-6 Div. I 6 10 ROYAL 22-3 Div. I NR 11 BISHOP AMAT 15-7 Div. I 12 12 LOS ALAMITOS 17-8 Div. I 11 13 CORONA SANTIAGO 18-6 Div. I 8 14 ANAHEIM CANYON 19-5 Div. I 14 15 SANTA MARGARITA 15-9 Div. I 10 16 CHINO 19-5 Div. I 16 17 MARINA 16-8 Div. I 17 18 VILLA PARK 16-7-1 Div. I 20 19 ALISO NIGUEL 17-5 Div. II 15 20 LOYOLA 22-5 Div. II 19 21 CYPRESS 19-6 Div. II 23 22 WSTM. LA QUINTA 22-4 Div. III 22 23 EDISON 16-9 Div. I 24 24 CHAMINADE 20-6 Div. II NR 25 OXNARD 19-5 Div. II NR

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THE TIMES’ RANKINGS

MARTIN HENDERSON’S SOFTBALL RANKINGS

*--* Rk Team Rec. Div. LW 1 GARDEN GROVE PACIFICA 24-2-1 Div. I 2 2 ROYAL 21-2 Div. I 3 3 CORONA 23-2 Div. I 1 4 EL DORADO 18-2-1 Div. II 5 5 MILLIKAN 21-5 Div. III 10 6 CAJON 23-2 Div. III 7 7 OAKS CHRISTIAN 22-5 Div. III 14 8 CORONA SANTIAGO 19-5 Div. I 8 9 SAUGUS 18-3 Div. I 9 10 VALENCIA 23-3 Div. I 11 11 NEWBURY PARK 15-8 Div. I 13 12 MATER DEI 18-6 Div. I 17 13 RIVERSIDE POLY 18-5-1 Div. I 6 14 THOUSAND OAKS 15-7 Div. I 22 15 WESTLAKE 15-8 Div. I 15 16 EL TORO 20-7 Div. II 18 17 PENINSULA 17-3 Div. II 19 18 DOS PUEBLOS 22-5 Div. IV 20 19 EL MODENA 18-8-1 Div. II 4 20 CAMARILLO 20-5 Div. I 21 21 KING 15-8 Div. I 12 22 ROSARY 19-7 Div. I 16 23 ETIWANDA 22-2 Div. II 23 24 NORCO 11-12 Div. I 24 25 SAN PEDRO 25-2 City NR

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