Surfriders Face Castle’s Softball Team After Logging Two Pre-season Triumphs
By Jack Danilewicz
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Del.icio.usIf anyone in the softball community had held out hope that Kailua might be looking ahead to Wednesday’s 3:30 p.m. showdown with rival Castle, the Surfriders quickly put that to rest with dominating performances in their first two league encounters.
To date, Kailua has looked like the prototypical Surfrider team, but to hear Kailua coach Bernard Victor tell it, the real test of his team’s mettle will be this week in their Oahu Interscholastic Association Eastern Conference showdown at Castle.
The teams split both meetings last year with the Knights, who captured the 2005-06 regular-season title, winning the first meeting 1-0. Kailua rebounded to take the final game 4-3 before a statewide television audience and went on to capture the OIA Tournament.
“They’re always tough,” Victor said of Castle.“They have a good coaching staff, and they always have talent. The (talented) girls just keep coming in. They’ve been looking really good (this season), so it should be interesting.”
Kailua had a lot of question marks when it began its pre-season in early November, but the Surfriders are “a little bit ahead of where I thought we’d be,” according to Victor, who has six Oahu Interscholastic Association titles and a state championship (2003) to his credit.
Nowhere has Kailua’s progress been more visible than offensively. In a pair of wins over Kalani and Kaimuki, the Surfriders combined for a whopping 22 runs and 31 hits. As a team, Kailua entered the weekend with a collective batting average of .500.
“That was the area I worried about most before the season,“said the coach. “A lot of the girls we have back weren’t hitting last year, but now they’re starting to pick it up. They’re paying more attention to what they’re doing (at the plate) instead of just swinging. They’re watching the ball better.
“We’re going to face a good pitcher (against Castle), so we’ll find out if we can hit like that,” he added.“Sometimes it’s hard to maintain that level.”
Second baseman/outfielder Amanda Vegas and outfielder Januari Santiago have accounted for much of Kailua’s offensive output so far with five RBI apiece, while juniors Ashley Hopfe and Brittany Tokunaga are batting .667 and .771, respectively.
Defensively, the Surfriders had to replace most of their infield from last season, but they had yet to commit any errors heading into the weekend.
“The infield has held up really well,” Victor said. “They had the potential coming into the season. It was a matter of how they would come out and play. I always tell the girls,“If you can hit and score, a few errors won’t hurt you. If you can’t hit and score and you make errors, they’re really going to hurt. Hopefully, the same team shows up every game and we can keep it up.”
Victor has gone with a pair of pitchers to date - Hopfe, who picked up the win against Kalani and Krista Dumandan, who earned the win against Kaimuki. He will make a game-time decision on who starts against the Knights on Wednesday.
“Krista has been hitting all of her spots, and her rise-ball has been working well,“Victor said.“Ashley is throwing a lot harder. Sometimes they can worry so much about throwing strikes that they slow down (their velocity). As a senior, this is the year to throw hard.”
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