Softball: Three rings for OCC’s Bond

COSTA MESA - When she’s not leading her players to state titles,

Orange Coast College badminton and women’s soccer coach Barbara Bond is

leading softball teams to world championships.

Bond, who coached Cynthia Tran, the winner of two state titles in the

spring, earned her third world softball championship last week.

Bond’s team, named “Second Wind,” beat the Ohio Cardinals 6-5 Friday

at the Senior Softball World Series to take the title. Bond picked up a

pair of rings with Second Wind last year.

Friday’s championship game was a rematch from last year, when Second

Wind scored three runs in the seventh to erase a two-run deficit and

finish with a one-run win over the Cardinals.

“They were anxious to play us again and set the record straight,” Bond

said.

However, Second Wind was the record-setter, becoming the first team to

ever win back-to-back championships at the Senior Softball World Series.

The Cardinals won in 1999 and nearly became a repeat winner last year.

Bond, who plays shortstop for Second Wind, was named to the

All-Tournament Team for the second-consecutive season.

Until recently, Bond hadn’t played competitive softball since she was

a senior in high school. At that time, she played on a team comparable to

those in today’s travel-ball leagues. However, she attended Long Beach

State, which didn’t have a softball team at the time.

In 1997, at the urging of Coast technology instructor Cheryl Shrock,

she started playing in recreational leagues. The more she played, the

more she was noticed.

Eventually, she was invited to join traveling tournament teams and

now, she’s a three-time world champion.

She earned a title last fall at the Senior Softball World

Championships in Winnipeg, Canada. She’ll be looking for her fourth ring

overall when that tournament is played again in Las Vegas from Sept. 5-8.

“We hope to make that one back-to-back, too,” she said.