There’s Joy in Sherman Oaks as Team Looks for Happy Ending

Notre Dame baseball Coach Tom Dill, who is also an English teacher at the school, discussed the renowned baseball poem “Casey at the Bat” with his class on Friday.

Hours later, his team staged a dramatic two-out rally to defeat Loyola, 3-2.

“There may not be any joy in Mudville, but in Sherman Oaks they are a celebrating with a vengeance,” Dill said after the game.

The poem takes place in the fictitious town of Mudville and in it, the “Mudville Nine” lose when “Casey” strikes out to end the game with the bases loaded.

Notre Dame had two outs and nobody on base in the bottom of the seventh before rallying to clinch third place in the Mission League, earning the league’s final playoff berth. Had the Cubs won, they would have advanced instead.

In contrast to the poem, No. 9 hitter J.P. Prepuk delivered a two-run single to tie the game at 2-2 and little-used outfielder Chris Morell singled in the winning run.

“Maybe I’ll change the poem and make it the Sherman Oaks nine,” Dill said. “And we can make it a happy ending.”

Next year?: Quartz Hill baseball Coach Dave Stradling hopes history repeats itself, at least to a point.

The last time the Rebels won a Golden League title, in 1993, they were considered a good shot to repeat behind veteran pitcher Roger Worley. Quartz Hill missed the playoffs in 1994, but rebounded to finish second in 1995 and win the title in 1996.

This year, Quartz Hill was supposed to contend for the title, behind veteran pitcher Mark Madsen, but a midseason swoon left the Rebels in fourth place and out of the playoffs.

“Take away five games in the middle of the season and we did pretty well,” Stradling said. “Maybe now we’ll bounce back for the next couple of years.”

League critic: After playing a tough nonleague schedule, Hoover Coach Kirt Kohlmeier hopes his Pacific League co-champion softball team is ready for the playoffs.

The Tornadoes (8-2 in league play) posted two blowout victories each over Muir (0-10) and Pasadena (1-9), while they were 4-2 against the league’s competitive teams.

Kohlmeier said he wishes Pasadena and especially Muir would move to another league because of their weak pitching.

“Even if [Muir] showed a girl how to toss it underhand and get it over,” he said, “it would screw a lot of people up.”

Teamless: The busiest coach at the Southern Section swimming championships didn’t even have a team to worry about.

Rose Bowl Aquatics Coach Terry Stoddard was at every preliminary and final session over the three days, mostly because swimmers under his charge were present everywhere.

Rose Bowl swimmers from the area included L.A. Baptist’s Jennifer Parmenter, who won the Division I 200-yard individual medley and 500 freestyle, Joel Everman of Notre Dame, who won the 200 and 500 freestyle in Division II and Heather Boylan of Saugus, who repeated in the 200 freestyle and won the 500 freestyle for the first time after winning the 100 backstroke last year in Division II. Stoddard also coached most of the Crescenta Valley swimmers--including Kenny Carpenter, Steve Kim and Evan Robb--who helped the Falcons finish third in Division II, and his daughter, Dana, who led La Canada to fourth place in the girls’ Division III finals.

Working hard: The only coach who comes close to Stoddard might be Chaminade’s Steve Reardon--he’s putting in long hours at Belmont Plaza.

Reardon, who also coaches at CLASS Aquatics, was at the Division I meet to watch Agoura’s Noah Cirincione, who finished second in both the 50 and 100 freestyle, then coached Chaminade in the girls’ Division III and boys’ Division II meets.

He also supervised morning workouts during the weekend and has more swimmers, including Stephanie, Natalie and Valerie Shapiro of Granada Hills and Blake Nord of Taft in the City Section finals today.

U.S. wants her: For the second year in a row, Thousand Oaks High volleyball player Jenn Detmer has been selected to the Youth National Team.

Detmer, a 6-foot-3 senior middle blocker, has signed to play with Stanford. She leaves for Colorado Springs in July to train with the national team.

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Girls’s Softball Top 10

Final regular season rankings of regional high schools by The Times:

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RK LW TEAM (League) REC. 1 1 Thousand Oaks (Marmonte) 23-3 2 2 Saugus (Foothill) 23-5 3 3 Camarillo (Marmonte) 18-7 4 4 Simi Valley (Marmonte) 20-7 5 5 Alemany (Mission) 21-3 6 6 Crescenta Valley (Pacific) 20-5 7 7 Paraclete (High Desert) 22-3 8 8 Hart (Foothill) 21-8 9 NR Newbury Park (Marmonte) 18-9 10 NR Hoover (Pacific) 18-8

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Boys’ Baseball Top 10

Final regular season rankings of regional high schools by The Times:

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RK LW TEAM (League) REC. 1 1 Chaminade (Mission) 24-2 2 2 Camarillo (Marmonte) 22-5-1 3 3 Calabasas (Frontier) 24-2 4 4 Crespi (Mission) 19-8 5 5 Burroughs (Foothill) 18-6 6 6 Notre Dame (Mission) 18-8 7 8 North Hollywood (Valley Pac-8) 25-6 8 10 Chatsworth (Northwest Valley) 18-8 9 NR Rio Mesa (Channel) 19-5 10 NR Hart (Foothill) 18-8

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