Knights Bring Crusade for Respectability Home : Softball: Fledgling women’s team, a heavy underdog in the Olympic Festival, is led by five players from the region.

The California Knights, a Northridge-based women’s softball team, should feel very much at home at Hjelte Park in Encino on Saturday when they take the field for their first appearance in the U.S. Olympic Festival--five of the players are local products.

Coach Niles Sherman, a Valencia resident who organized the team last year, first recruited his wife Janet, a former UCLA catcher, and began to build from there.

Competing in the open division in their first year, the Knights earned a berth in the Festival by virtue of their fourth-place finish in the National tournament in Redding, Calif., last summer.

“I feel really lucky and blessed,” Sherman said. “I still say my prayers to say thanks because the girls took a big chance (on me).”

Sherman, 33, a motorcycle policeman for the city of Burbank, was an assistant football coach at Hart High in the late 1970s before Al Weil persuaded him to help out with the softball team in 1986. Sherman, who coached with Weil for four years at his alma mater, has been coaching softball since.

The Knights (24-4-1), who represent the South, will play each of the other three teams twice before medal competition Wednesday.

The Connecticut Brakettes, defending champions of both the Festival and the National tournament, represent the East. The Redding Rebels are the North’s entry and the Whittier Raiders represent the West.

All four of the Knights’ losses have come at the hands of the Rebels (three losses) and the Raiders (one). The Knights are the youngest team in the competition--not to mention the heavy underdog.

Much of the Knights’ firepower this season has come from the five local products in the lineup. The top three batters include: Priscilla Rouse of Sherman Oaks (.426 batting average), Kim Maher of Ventura (.402) and Lisa Erickson of La Crescenta (.392).

Janet Pinneau-Sherman and Chrissy Oliver, a pitcher and Simi Valley High graduate, round out the list of local talent playing for the Knights.

Pinneau-Sherman, Rouse and Erickson are three of seven team members who have graduated, leaving college ball to the younger players. Summer softball means different things to different players. For those out of school, it is what they look forward to during the spring season. For college players, summer ball is a means of staying sharp and tuning up for fall practices and the spring season.

Pinneau-Sherman, 26, who played softball for UCLA in 1983-86, is a Granada Hills High product who recently was promoted to assistant coach of the Cal State Northridge softball team. Like most post-college ballplayers, she talks frequently of retiring from the game she loves best.

“Age is catching up with me,” Pinneau-Sherman said. “I’ll have to put the playing down soon. I don’t know how much more my body can take.”

Pinneau-Sherman, who is batting .319 and has 25 runs batted in, and Rouse are the only Knights who previously have played in an Olympic Sports Festival. Both played in the 1989 Festival in Oklahoma City and helped their team earn a bronze medal.

Rouse, 26, who started her college career at UCLA before transferring to Northridge to play in 1985-87, might be the lucky charm the Knights need in the Festival. Rouse, an outfielder with a team-high six doubles, has a history of championships in her favor.

In Rouse’s senior year at Kennedy High in 1982, the Golden Cougars earned the school’s only City Section softball title. Coincidentally, in her senior season at Northridge, the Matadors earned their last national championship in Division II.

Like Pinneau-Sherman, Rouse also talks unconvincingly about retirement.

“Last year I was gonna retire, but it was a bad year and I didn’t want to retire on a bad year,” Rouse said. “But, I’m still having fun, so why retire? I think why quit. What am I gonna do? Sit around and get fat?”

Sherman recruited a handful of new players this season after seven members of last year’s squad either retired or moved on to play for another team.

Maher, a 1990 Buena High graduate who hit four home runs for Fresno State in the spring, is among the new acquisitions. Maher, who has a team-high 27 RBIs and three home runs in her first season of open competition, was quite a catch for Sherman.

“Having a player like her takes a lot of pressure off the other players,” Sherman said. “With her in the lineup, pitchers focus on Kim a little bit more and that allows Pri (Rouse) or J.J. (Shari Johnson of Oklahoma State) to get the extra bases and it allows us to slip other people by the pitcher.”

Maher, a first baseman, started playing softball 10 years ago and plans to play for 10 more.

“I’m playing now just to keep in shape (for college competition),” Maher said. “I thought I might get sick of it, but I love it. It’s a big part of my life.”

Oliver, currently a pitcher for Oklahoma State, is also new to the Knights this year. Oliver (6-1) has 47 strikeouts in 51 innings and has an 0.69 earned-run average.

Toni Gutierrez, a pitcher for Florida State and a Canyon High product, is also a member of the Knights but will not be on the 15-member roster for the Festival.

Other team members include: Tiffany Boyd and Charlotte Wiley of Cal State Fullerton; Shannon Kimberling, Deborah Mobius and Sharon Sodano of Oklahoma State; Donna McDaniel of Fresno State; Camille Spitaleri of Kansas and Deanna Weiman of UCLA.