Offense Is Key To Surfriders’ Outcome At State Tourney

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Momentum is a nice thing to have on your side heading into a state tournament,but the only thing really guaranteed in postseason is that all teams involved begin with a clean slate.

In a regular season with its share of near-misses, the Kailua softball team welcomes the new life that comes with this week’s DataHouse 2008 Division I Hawaii State Softball Championships.

“All it takes is four wins, and we’ll be state champions,“said longtime Surfrider assistant coach Eddie Mitsuda, who was filling in for head coach Bernard Victor late last week.

The Surfriders have won six OIA titles, most recently in 2006, and four state championships during the Victor era, and they hope to be in the mix this week as well.

In preseason,Kailua seemed a year away from contention with only two seniors in the starting lineup for most games. But they have largely overcome their inexperience and managed a second-place finish (behind Moanalua) in the ultra-competitive OIA Red East regular season before a fourth-place finish in last week’s OIA tournament. Kailua takes a 9-6 record into the state tournament with three of the losses having come to Moanalua.

Of more value to the Surfriders was their recent 3-1 loss to two-time OIA champion Mililani in the semifinals of the conference tournament. While that setback had knocked them out of a shot at the title game, Kailua hardly was without positives to build on, most notably sophomore pitcher Jaelleen Johnson, who gave up only one earned run on six hits in absorbing the loss. Kailua has rotated Johnson and senior standout Krista Dumandan on the mound for most of the year. Dumandan, who joins second baseman Amanda Vegas as the only other senior in the lineup, will get the call Wednesday in Kailua’s first-round game.

“We feel very confident in both of them,” Mitsuda said. “We think we have a good chance this week. The Mililani game proved that.We had only one bad inning. The best teams will all be there, and any one of them can win it.

“Krista has been pretty consistent in hitting her spots.She’s been going really hard the last couple of days at practice and working on her rise-ball and change-up. Her riser had been coming in a little flat, but it’s improved.Jaelleen needed a change-up, and we’ve been working on that with her.”

For their part, the Surfriders see their fate at the state tournament tied to their offensive output.

“You have to have good pitching and defense and timely hitting,” Mitsuda explained. “Defensively, we’ve been pretty good. Even if they hit our pitching, our defense may be able to hold them down, too, but we’ve been leaving a lot of base runners on base - we haven’t been able to get that timely hit - so we’ll have to make sure our kids are mentally focused. Bernard always talks to the kids about seeing the ball, hitting the ball, putting it in play . . . (you) don’t take strikes, and be aggressive.”

As part of their day-to-day preparation the girls spend time on visualization exercises as well as batting and fielding. The girls basketball team had put similar emphasis on their mental approach by attending a weekly yoga class.

Offensively, Mitsuda praised the play of Kawehi Hall and Johnna Pedro, who had two of Kailua’s five hits versus eventual OIA champion Mililani.

“They’ve both been hitting the ball pretty well. Both of them are hitting over .400 right now.”

With a long history of one-run games in the state tournament, the Kailua coaching staff also has been fine-tuning the short game. “Our bunting hasn’t been great, so we’ve been working on that,“Mitsuda said. “We lost some close games from not being able to put down a bunt when we needed to.”

The State Softball Championships runs Wednesday through Saturday at Rainbow Wahine Softball Stadium at UH-Manoa.Pairings for the tournament were to be announced late Sunday afternoon.