A team of their own

Haley Putnam just wanted to pitch. The Laguna Beach High freshman has several pitches at her disposal.

Last year, when she was an eighth-grader, she made a pitch to her classmates, too.

“I was starting to really tell people in eighth grade, ‘We need a team for the high school,’ ” she said.

For the first time since 2007, there is indeed a softball team at Laguna Beach High. Those behind the scenes know how much went into making that dream a reality.

Coach Mike Hunter’s Breakers are understandably taking a bit of time to get acclimated to their relaunched softball program. Ten of the 18 players are freshmen and Laguna will play a junior varsity Orange Coast League schedule, although the plan is to have a varsity squad next year.

Yet every time the team takes the field at El Morro Elementary — Laguna’s only maintained softball field — it is accomplishing something special.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Johnna Gherardini moved from Dana Point to Laguna Beach in 2004. Gherardini’s daughter Kennedi — now a freshman catcher for the Breakers — was a softball player, but there was a surprise for the Gherardinis.

“There was no [softball] league,” Johnna Gherardini said. “Laguna only had one traveling 14-and-under team coached by Mark Linton. That next year my daughter had to play baseball, but I had coached soccer so I recruited enough girls.”

Rick Putnam dealt with a lot of the same frustrations with Haley. Because she’s a pitcher, her development would be key to any team she was on.

“She loves throwing them high and tight,” Putnam said. “She loves the limelight out on the mound. It’s all about pitching and running. At this age, a lot of pitchers dominate.”

Haley also began playing baseball when she was 6 or 7, she said. Soon, she wanted to switch to softball, but the family ran into the same problem.

“I had to go to Newport to play [softball] for one year,” Haley Putnam said. “No one really recognized it in Laguna.”

Enter Laguna Beach Little League, which had Linton as president. For three years, LBLL also had a softball wing, as well. The teams would go to Newport Beach occasionally to play other teams, but there was a problem with numbers.

Laguna Beach also had a high school softball program in these years, albeit not a very good one. These Breakers, coached by former athletic director and longtime English teacher Mike Roche, had a combined record of 6-50 from 2005 through 2007.

“I had pitched for five years,” Haley Putnam said of the absence of high school softball since then. “Once I heard about Laguna Beach High School not playing, I was really worried. I put all this effort in and I really love the sport.”

At the club level, Laguna Beach softball was trying to cultivate the next level of Breakers softball players. Yet, there were significant issues.

Little League softball is different than teams associated with the Amateur Softball Assn. Simply put, Little League softball is much more limited in scope.

Then, there was the field itself.

EL MORRO ISSUES

Laguna Beach can be a funny place. With its hilly terrain, it certainly isn’t an ideal place for a baseball or softball field.

That’s why the maintenance of El Morro has been so important. The field just off Pacific Coast Highway offers beautiful scenery, with the ocean as a backdrop.

But as for the field itself?

“It was the worst field we’d ever played on,” Suzanne Redfearn said. “We’d go out to Santa Ana, and their fields are beautifully maintained by the city.”

Redfearn also has a daughter who plays softball; Halle is a seventh-grader. Her husband, Cary, was a longtime Laguna Beach Little League baseball coach. But she highlighted one of the problems: Nobody seemed to take responsibility for the maintenance of that softball field. Often, that responsibility would rest with the coaches themselves.

It’s on county land, Rick Putnam said, so the school doesn’t need to maintain it. The city doesn’t really maintain it, either. Yet he saw it as a danger risk. With the grass level down the base lines so much higher than the dirt, it makes for an uneven — and dangerous — surface.

“It regularly gets overrun by soccer, bikes and just the weekend users,” Rick Putnam said. “A number of kids got totally whacked with a ground ball.”

This was where he said he ran into problems with Laguna Beach Little League. Sometimes, the responsibility fell on the players themselves, as they spent valuable practice time trying to upkeep El Morro.

“They hadn’t allowed us to prepare the field,” Putnam said. “The Little League wouldn’t allow us to borrow a drag net to ‘drag’ the field. It was just a battle.”

Johnna Gherardini agreed, calling it a “love/hate” relationship with the Little League.

Laguna Beach Little League President Jennifer Sweet declined to comment on any conflicts in the relationship between the league and Laguna Beach softball. But Sweet, in her second year as president, said having to maintain the field yourself isn’t so uncommon, even in baseball.

“I’m very supportive of softball,” Sweet said. “It’s an uphill battle for youth sports and facilities, and that’s tough. It’s a tough world. When we use Top of the World and El Morro [for baseball], we’ve had to put down sod, add dirt and clay. But we have a relationship with the city to do that together.”

Gherardini and Putnam finally split with LBLL and formed their own program. They partnered themselves with Newport Mesa Girls Softball and got ASA affiliation, but the program lasted one more year.

As of now, there really is no softball program within Laguna Beach. Meanwhile, there was no high school program after 2007, either. Softball in Laguna Beach seemed to be slipping away.

Rick Putnam had to do something, he said, so he put in $4,600 of his own money to retool the El Morro softball field in February 2009. He brought in truckloads of dirt from Corona and the process lasted about a week.

Yet, the field is still an issue. The upkeep continues to be a struggle.

“It’s not a concern for the school administration,” Putnam said. “[Laguna Beach Unified School District facilities and grounds director] Eric Jetta is great, but he’s not given the resources. [Softball] is definitely a stepchild.”

MIGRATION TO LAGUNA NIGUEL

For some of the younger players, like seventh-grade pitchers Halle Redfearn and Katie Stanton, Laguna Niguel Girls Softball offered a solution. They started making the drive, about 11 miles one way from downtown Laguna Beach, to the club located behind Niguel Hills Middle School.

Laguna Niguel offers five lighted fields. Plus, as Katie’s mom, Lori Stanton, pointed out, it can be taken to a higher level. For example, there are all-star teams, unknown vocabulary for years in Laguna Beach.

“A lot of the girls feel like they need to play travel ball to play on the high school team,” said Lori Stanton, who, like Johnna Gherardini, is a former softball player herself.

Lori Stanton coaches a team at Laguna Niguel and Cary and Suzanne Redfearn are also co-coaches of a team. Stanton said there are about 20 Laguna Beach girls who now play for Laguna Niguel.

“It’s a real nice, family-oriented program,” Lori Stanton said.

Laguna Niguel Softball Club President Dana Pica said her organization is happy to oblige.

“Unfortunately we can’t place [the Laguna Beach girls] all on the same team,” Pica said. “That’s based on the draft order. But we’ve tried to set up carpools, and set up practice times as the same time. We understand it’s a drive.”

A key difference from El Morro? The Laguna Niguel field space is owned by Capistrano Unified School District, Pica said, so the school maintains the facility.

A BETTER TOMORROW

Mike Hunter likes projects like these.

The new Laguna Beach High softball coach was at Santiago of Garden Grove last year, and Whittier Christian before that. He led Whittier Christian to the CIF quarterfinals in 2008. On the Breakers, he also has two experienced assistants in Ashley Klein (who played at Aliso Niguel High) and Heather Killion (Long Beach Millikan).

“I like start-ups,” he said. “I fix programs that are broken. It’s great to see the progression of the girls, how far they can come along. I love the challenge.”

Some of the players on the high school team, like the battery of Haley Putnam and Kennedi Gherardini, are experienced players. Some are total newcomers to the sport of softball.

Yet all will be experienced before long. Hunter said he has a two-month summer program and also practices in the fall, as well.

The Breakers had their first game Monday against a varsity Brethren Christian team. Playing without Putnam (sprained ankle), Laguna started Weiss and fought before falling, 8-7.

Other starters for Hunter include first baseman Karina Riess, second baseman Chloe Mansour, shortstop Cory Kent, third baseman Katie Andersen and outfielders Grace Komoroczy (the lone senior), Bailey Romatoski and Shannon Adams.

“Everyone loves each other,” Haley Putnam said. “We progressed a lot over the summer. I think we’ll win league. I’m just happy [softball] came back. I didn’t want to go to another school to play; I wanted to stay in Laguna.”

Haley Putnam said she is considering travel ball, maybe with the Irvine Sting. She is a developing tennis player, as well. Kennedi Gherardini is an accomplished junior surfer and played for the girls’ water polo team this winter as a goalie, albeit sparingly.

Yet those younger kids, those seventh-graders at Laguna Niguel mean more athletes in the pipeline, as well. And for years, that just wasn’t the case.

“It’s exciting,” Weiss said. “I feel like we’re going to win a lot of games, and people are going to know that this wasn’t a waste of time. Hopefully we can keep this going.”