OCVarsity.com columnist Steve Fryer
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Fryer: Top baseball teams deliver stars, model crowd
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Taking a look around Orange County high school sports:
• Orange Lutheran pitcher Gerrit Cole struck out 11 Mater Dei batters Wednesday to go with the 10 he struck out in a previous victory over the Monarchs. Cole, a senior right-hander who signed with UCLA and is a top draft prospect, struck out five of the last six batters he faced, including the side in the seventh inning. You have to like a pitcher who does that in a big game late in the season.
• Not only was the Mater Dei-Orange Lutheran game at Hart Park, where Lutheran emerged with a 4-1 victory, well-played, it was well-attended, too, with well-behaved spectators. Sometimes big games bring out the worst in spectators, but there were nothing but positive vibes at the game. This was unlike last week's Tesoro-at-Aliso Niguel game, at which a spectator yelled "your center fielder is horrible" while seated less than 10 feet from a rules-for-fan-behavior placard posted on the side of the Aliso dugout.
• Mater Dei's Tyler Rahmatulla is as good a defensive shortstop as these eyes have seen in county baseball the past 18 years. He has great range, quick hands and release, and a strong, accurate arm.
• Baseball games will be Monday-Wednesday or Tuesday-Thursday for those two-game league series next week, the final week of the regular season. That leaves Friday open for any games needed to break ties for playoff berths, although with teams playing three games against league rivals during the season, those best-of-3 series usually take care of everything. All regular-season games must be played before Saturday, with the CIF-SS office releasing baseball playoffs seedings and first-round pairings May 12.
• Seedings and first-round pairings for boys team tennis and boys volleyball will be released Monday and can be found in the early afternoon at ocvarsity.com. Monday also is the day that boys team golf divisional playoff matches will be played.
• Next week's active playoffs schedule includes diving prelims and finals Tuesday, badminton individual and mixed doubles finals Thursday at the Orange County Badminton Club in Orange, and swimming prelims and finals Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
• Expect a new association rule to be proposed – and passed – sometime during the 2008-09 school year once high school athletics administrators realize what a huge mistake it was to eliminate the rule at last week's CIF-SS Council meeting. The association rule, of which the current one expires July 1, restricts the time high school coaches could spend with the athletes outside of the season of sport.
• That was an excellent coaching hire when Crean Lutheran South got Aaron Meschuk as its first football coach. Meschuk, at St. Michael's Prep the past two seasons, is a smart, high-energy guy who can start a football program. Crean, named for late philanthropist John Crean, will move into its Irvine campus for the 2009-10 school year. It currently is leasing a two-story classroom building at St. Paul's Greek Orthodox Church in Irvine.
• It is interesting that Crean, sister school to Orange Lutheran, will start its football program in 2009 and play a junior varsity schedule that season and in 2010. Most new schools play one year of JV then jump, sometimes too soon, directly into varsity football.
• Growth can be good but often is accompanied by problems; just compare the Orange County of the 1960s to the Orange County of today. The growth of Orange Lutheran's athletic program brought much more interest in its clinching of the Trinity League baseball championship this week than its clinching of the Olympic League baseball title did in 2002, and means much more interest now in the transfer of athletes from a league-rival school than such a transfer would have created in '02. Some people are forgetting that events dictate our coverage, not the other way around.
Contact the writer: sfryer@ocregister.com
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