Softball: Title Berth Four Years in the Making for Spartans

Contrary to what the playoff bracket might suggest, La Cañada’s path to Friday’s CIF-Southern Section Division 5 championship game against Beaumont did not begin May 19 in the first round when senior Lauren O’Leary pitched a perfect game against Ramona Convent.

Nor did their run to the title begin back in early March when the Spartans opened the year as the top ranked team in their division.

Nope. As hard as it is to believe, the Spartans’ championship seeds were planted way back during the 2008 spring. Back when softball at La Cañada was an afterthought. Those Spartans had won a combined 10 games in the previous three seasons. The program was directionless. About to begin a third straight year with a new coach.

But all it took was the right coach combined with the right crop of freshmen to spark a four-year turnaround that concludes Friday night at 5:15 p.m. when the No. 1 Spartans face the No. 2 Cougars at Deanna Manning Stadium at Colonel Bill Barber Marine Corps Memorial Park in Irvine. Beaumont (25-4) advanced to the championship with a 4-0 win over Arroyo, while La Cañada knocked off South El Monte, 6-2.

Under coach KC Mathews, O'Leary and fellow seniors Anna Edwards, Megan Siepler, Shirley Drange and Kayla McCue, the Spartans (25-3) have gone from perennial Rio Hondo League cellar-dweller to the dominant program of their division. The Spartans have compiled a 71-29 record in the past four years, steadily improving as the Class of 2011 has moved up the high school ladder.

“They’ve been the cornerstone of all of that success,” Mathews said of his senior class. “What they’ve done is laid the foundation, and they’re the cornerstone. But they’ve done such a great job of leading this program and setting the example that now we’re building.”

It wasn’t easy. The wins didn’t just pile up over night. First, a culture change had to occur within the program, one that was spearheaded by a group of freshmen who refused to accept a losing standard at La Cañada.

“Recreation,” is the word Edwards used to describe of the softball program she encountered when she first entered high school.

“I would say it was ‘Oh maybe I kind of want to play softball. Something fun.’ Which is not a bad thing. How we take softball isn’t for everyone.”

“It was more I’ll-take-it-to-get-out-of-PE kind of class instead of like, ‘Let’s go win a championship,’ ” O’Leary said. “I know we both played travel ball before that, and I know that we’re both really competitive people. … Losing that many games just wasn’t OK for me.”

And it only took seven games that first year for the new attitude to translate into results on the field. Edwards, O’Leary and Mathews all point to the same game as the moment when people had to start taking softball at La Cañada seriously.

With O’Leary in the circle and Edwards behind the plate, the Spartans upset eventual Rio Hondo League champion Temple City, 1-0, in their league opener. La Cañada no longer could be considered the pushover it was for so many years.

“Before the game, we got there and they were dancing and goofing off,” O’Leary said. “That made me so mad because they took it like a joke. After we won that game they sort of started paying attention.”

Said Mathews: “They’d been mercied by Temple City the two years before that. That was the fist time where the girls really said, ‘Wait a minute we can do this.”

La Cañada rode the momentum of that win to finish third in the Rio Hondo League with a 7-5 record and make the CIF playoffs. Not a bad first year for a young team with a coach who didn’t have much experience coaching softball before assuming control of the program. Mathews was on the football coaching staff at La Cañada the year before he became head softball coach.

But while Mathews lacked encyclopedic knowledge of the sport – he’d sometimes call the pitcher’s circle "the mound," and the plate "the dish" – he brought much-needed stability to the program.

“The varsity staff has been consistent here for three of the four years,” Mathews. “The same people around preaching the same stuff.”

Without constant turnover, the Spartans have flourished under Mathews. They jumped from 12 wins that first year to 19 in the second season. Last year they won 25 games and advanced all the way to the divisional semifinals, and now they’re on the brink of a CIF title.

Mathews credits his program’s rise to the work of his five seniors. O’Leary has thrown 174 1/3 of La Cañada’s 191 innings this year and boasts a 0.40 ERA with 229 strikeouts. Edwards is hitting a team-best .465 and also leads the club with 11 home runs. Siepler’s four RBIs keyed the Spartans quarterfinal win over Katella, and Drange and McCue have combined for 16 RBIs and 12 doubles.

“That freshman class that I got (in 2008) makes any coach look good,” Mathews said. “I’ll tell you that much.”

Though Edwards and O’Leary are quick to point out that it’s not just their class that has led the Spartans to Irvine, La Cañada also starts four sophomores and a junior, a championship celebration would certainly be a storybook ending to their careers at La Cañada.

“I’m excited for these girls to have this opportunity,” Mathews said. “I heard them say we worked so hard this year. … They’ve been working hard for four years. And for the seniors to have this chance to go out like this, I can’t think of a more fitting way for them to go out.”