Preps: Valley Schools Tighten Grip on City 4-A Baseball Title

Only one round of the City baseball playoffs has been completed but it’s already been determined that the title will stay in the San Fernando Valley for the 15th consecutive season.

It usually doesn’t happen that quickly, but it always happens. Most years, at least one non-Valley team makes it to the semifinals, and occasionally one even makes it to the final.

But this year, the five non-Valley teams went out in the first round of the playoffs, all victims of Valley teams. When the quarterfinals are played today, it will look more like the West Valley League playoffs than the City championship series.

The City Section has had more than its share of dominant teams in several sports. Either Banning or Carson has won the 4-A football title since 1976. Crenshaw has won 9 of 17 4-A basketball titles. Palisades annually dominates tennis, volleyball and swiming. But a dominant area?

Not only is the Valley dominant, it also don’t appear to losing its grip.

Even “franchise” players such as Eddie Murray, Darryl Strawberry and Eric Davis couldn’t stop the streak.

Murray’s Locke team was eliminated in the quarterfinals in 1973. The Crenshaw team with Strawberry and Chris Brown of the San Francisco Giants lost in the 1979 final to Granada Hills and a pitcher named John Elway. In 1980, Davis’ last year at Fremont, his team was eliminated in the first round by Granada Hills.

“I see a lot of teams that have great athletes but they’re not good baseball teams,” said Venice Coach Jeff Shimizu, whose team is a perennial 3-A power. “Baseball’s not a sport where you can come in the 10th grade and start playing.”

Which shows that even if the talent is there, a high school team is only as good as its youth program.

“The potential talent is still there,” said Willie West, Crenshaw’s basketball coach who doubles as baseball coach. “The kids just don’t play enough baseball. They don’t get in Connie Mack leagues and American Legion.

“That’s not enough baseball, especially in the inner city.”

Coach Darryl Stroh of Granada Hills apparently concurs.

“The opportunity to play baseball has probably been provided to the kids in the Valley at a younger age than the kids in the other parts of the City,” Stroh told The Times last year. “There are more Little League facilities, that type of thing.”

Shimizu said: “The youth programs are a reflection of the (high school) program. There may be more of a commitment from the community (in the Valley).”

Shimizu played on the last non-Valley winner, the 1972 Venice team that defeated Dorsey for the title, 1-0. After that, Venice always got close but never made it to the final, often losing to Valley schools in the semifinals before it became a 3-A school.

The inner city also has trouble hanging onto some outstanding athletes, losing them often to busing or academic ineligibility.

One baseball team especially hurt by busing is Crenshaw’s. Eight years after playing for the City title, Crenshaw is a middle-of-the-pack 3-A team.

“We lose a lot of kids (to busing),” West said.

Academic ineligibility is another problem. For participation in extracurricular activities, the City requires that students have a C average and no failing grades.

That rule has had a dramatic effect on some inner-city schools. Of Locke’s 2,000 students, only 500 met those requirements. Locke finished sixth in the Marine League.

“We had great talent this year,” Locke Coach Michael Jackson said. “What hurt us was eligibility. That’s what really killed us.”

One change that might put a dent in the Valley’s domination is re-unify the divisions, a change supported by Shimizu, Stroh and others.

Through 1982, all 49 teams competed in the same division. But in 1983, the City divided baseball competition into a 4-A division, with 16 of the 25 teams from the Valley, and a 3-A division, with no Valley teams.

Under the single-division alignment, only the top two teams from each league went to the playoffs, decreasing the number of Valley teams advancing.

“City baseball is not strong enough to divide into two divisions,” Shimizu said. “It’s not like the CIF (Southern Section) where you have these hundreds of teams and have to divide into divisions.

“I know many of the coaches have told me they want to return to the old system.”

Also, it would allow Shimizu’s team, Venice, annually one of the best programs in the City, a chance to play against the Valley teams. Last year, that might have been significant.

The 1986 Venice team was considered the best in the City. The Gondoliers beat every Valley team they played, plus Simi Valley, which was ranked No. 1 in the Southern Section for much of the season. But they didn’t get a chance to prove it, having to settle for their third straight 3-A title.

The Masters meet, which combines all four Southern Section divisions in the final qualifying step for the state track meet, will be held tonight at Cerritos College. Competition begins at 6:30 for field events and 7 for races.

The top five finishers in each event will advance to the state meet next Friday and Saturday at Hughes Stadium in Sacramento.

The girls’ distance races, the 1,600 and 3,200, will have its usual solid fields, with Christy Farrell of Thousand Oaks, Tracey Williams of El Monte Mountain View, Brigid Freyne of Riverside Poly, Reyna Cervantes of Montebello and Melissa Sutton of Newbury Park in both.

The boys’ 100 has the extra dimension of regional pride, which should add a little something to a meet being held strictly for qualifying. Among the nine entrants are Ernie Barnes of Monrovia, Corey Ealy and Ricky Ervins of Pasadena Muir, W.C. Morrison of Pasadena and Martin Cannady of Duarte, and the state isn’t big enough for all of them, let alone the San Gabriel Valley.

Prep Notes

The City 4-A baseball lineup today: Granada Hills at top-seeded Canoga Park, Sylmar at San Fernando, Granada Hills Kennedy at Chatsworth and Woodland Hills El Camino Real at Poly, all at 3 p.m. In the 3-A, it’s Jefferson at top-seeded Venice, Palisades at Belmont, Westchester at Marshall and Wilson at Bell. . . . The Southern Section baseball playoffs also will move into the quarterfinal round today, with four of the six top-seeded teams already eliminated. Among the top games: In the 4-A, No. 1 Anaheim Esperanza gets a chance to avenge one of its two regular-season losses at 3 p.m. at Anaheim Servite, and No. 4 La Puente Bishop Amat plays host to Lakewood at 3 p.m., in a game matching left-handers J.R. Phillips (13-0) of Amat and Mike McNary (9-3); In the 3-A, El Segundo plays fourth-seeded Riverside North at 7:30 p.m. at the Riverside Sports Center; in the 2-A, second-seeded Mission Viejo Capistrano Valley travels to El Centro to play Central at 3 p.m. . . . In Southern Section girls’ softball, the 3-A and 2-A teams will play their quarterfinals games today.

Softball star Michele Granger of Placentia Valenica set a single-season state strikeout mark two weeks ago with 17 against Anaheim, giving her 443 this year.

That broke the old record of 427 by Sandy Ortgles of Newbury Park in 1983. Then, in last Friday’s 6-0 first-round playoff win over Westminster La Quinta, Granger, a junior, set a new career strikeout record with 1,134 in three years, bettering the 1,124 Samantha Ford had for Newhall Hart from 1982-85. The total went to 1,150 in Wednesday’s 1-0 win over Glendora, with Granger also doubling home the only run. . . .

CITY 4-A BASEBALL CHAMPIONS: 1973-1986

14 years of success for the San Fernando Valley

Year Winner Runner-up Score 1973 Sylmar Kennedy 3-2 1974 Monroe Taft 9-8 1975 Granada Hills Westchester 4-3* 1976 Granada Hills Monroe 2-1 1977 Cleveland Carson 5-4* 1978 Granada Hills Poly 4-2 1979 Granada Hills Crenshaw 10-4 1980 Sylmar North Hollywood 6-2 1981 Kennedy Banning 4-2 1982 Cleveland Palisades 13-0 1983 Chatsworth Sylmar 8-7 1984 Granada Hills El Camino Real 15-4 1985 Kennedy Banning 10-9 1986 Grant Granada Hills 5-1

*--Eight innings

NOTE: All one division until 1983, when the City was split up into 4-A and 3-A.