Los Amigos softball learning, looking for more success

Los Angeles Times

31-03-2025

GARDEN GROVE — Los Amigos reached the CIF Southern Section softball playoffs the past two years after missing out the previous decade, advanced both times, then reeled off eight victories to start this season.
It's nice to be winning, of course, and the Lobos treasure their successes — aspire to more and better — but let's not, head coach Jeff Holley suggests, get ahead of ourselves.
Los Amigos is not, in any sense, a softball powerhouse, and so when those eight wins were followed by two lopsided losses — the second a 10-0, six-inning Coast League decision Friday afternoon at Santiago — there was disappointment, but no surprise.
Los Amigos' old Garden Grove League rivals made it 21 in a row in the series since 2013 — hitting double digits for the 13th time in the past 14 meetings.
'I wanted to get out of here 5-0, 6-0. I would have been really excited by that,' Holley, in his fourth season in charge, said afterward. 'This still wasn't that bad, 10-0 in six innings. They have beaten us by a lot worse.'
Holley and his players know where they stand, and there's pride in the strides the Lobos (8-2 overall, 1-2 in the Coast League) have taken since hitting bottom after the pandemic. He stepped in after a winless 2021 campaign, won four games in his first season with what were basically beginners, and has since gone 32-18-1 with three playoff wins and more, they hope, on the horizon.
That's not really the point, more so fruits-of-labor stuff: Los Amigos' program, Holley says, is about 'learning the game of softball.' Literally.
'We have people who haven't played before,' he said. 'When they come to us, they're brand new, and so we teach them the game, we teach them to be enthusiastic and have energy and leave everything on the field. And everything else will take care of itself.'
Success, he said, is measured by 'getting better every single day.' Every year 'is very rewarding, because you see the growth, especially with players that don't have the background. They're always growing and learning and getting better.'
The Lobos have some experience this year, with six seniors who have grown within the program, but not much depth: just 11 players, including junior varsity call-ups, after two starters — senior Ingrid Alvarado and her sister, freshman Angie Cervantes — transferred this week to El Modena after a family move. 'A big loss,' Holley called it.
Half the team is 'newcomers that we're going through what we did three years ago with [the seniors],' he said. 'And [the seniors] are staying on them, to say, 'Hey, you can do this. We went through this. You can learn this. You've just got to give it your all.'
'We get girls who have never touched a ball before,' senior first baseman Maria Castillo said. 'Seeing them go from not touching a ball before to simply falling in love with the game is what it's all about.'
The experience against stronger programs, such as Santiago's, helps. The Cavaliers (9-3, 3-0) hammered 13 hits behind a nine-for-12, six-run, seven-RBI collaboration from the first three hitters in the lineup and rode senior right-hander Ihilani Berard, who limited Los Amigos to three hits — second- and fourth-inning singles by Alina Mendez and a fifth-inning single by Yvonne Gonzalez — and allowed just one runner past first base. She struck out nine, five on three pitches.
It was over, for all intents, in the third, all through the top of Santiago's lineup. Lillian Centeno (three for four) turned a single into a triple when the ball bounced past left fielder Melenny Andrade. Nayelli DeJesus followed with an infield single that Gonzalez, the third baseman, could only knock down, and Marilyn Nuñez homered over the fence in right-center, the first of her three extra-base hits.
That might have been it, on a better day, but five errors added up to four unearned runs, three of them with two out as Santiago extended its lead to 6-0 in the fourth, added another pair in the fifth, then put across two more with none out in the sixth to impose the 10-run mercy rule.
'I thought we actually played pretty well,' Holley said. 'In the fourth inning, we got the first two out, we had two easy ground balls to get out of the inning, we don't, and they erupt. And in the fifth inning, it was the same thing, and they explode.'
The postseason is within reach. The Lobos figure to battle Savanna (2-12, 1-3) for third place, and they've got the advantage after a 7-5 victory in their March 21 Coast League debut and two more meetings ahead.
Three in a row 'would say a lot for us,' senior shortstop Leah Lemusu said, 'just because I know a lot of people doubt us from previous years we didn't win many games. ... It would improve our image, and I think it would be exciting for everyone, too.'
The title will go to Santiago, winner of the last three and four of the most recent five Garden Grove League titles, or Anaheim, which captured the last six Orange League championships (with Savanna runner-up the last three). The Colonists (10-1, 2-0), beat Los Amigos, 10-0, in a five-inning game Wednesday. Savanna took both teams the full seven innings.
'This is going to be the hardest year to make the playoffs because the league we're in is the toughest league we've been in,' Holley said. 'It would be an even greater accomplishment to do it this year.'
That's the plan.
'We've accomplished so much,' Castillo said. 'And we have even more to accomplish.'