The first month of the Culver City High School girls’ softball season has been very challenging. They are currently 2-9 and 0-1 in the Bay League but with nine games remaining on their regular season schedule they are hoping to climb to the .500 mark and possibly make the playoffs. Seven of those nine games are against Bay League opponents.
The Centaurs scheduled a lot of very good softball teams in the preseason trusting that playing good teams would only make them better in the second half of the season. They lost their first league game 6-5 to Leuzinger last Tuesday.
After their loss to Norte Dame a few weeks ago at home, Culver City head coach Carlos Chavez had this to say. “It was a very tough loss, but we played one of the top schools in Southern California so that was good for our team. The girls needed to see the speed of their pitchers, and they needed to see where we stand and that’s why we play teams like this. Even though we lost the energy was better. Moving forward when we play good teams, we hope that these types of games will help us.”
Right now, the Centaurs are still losing teams but with nine games remaining they are hoping that playing against very good teams will jump start them into playing winning softball. “I believe when they see great softball and faster pitching, hopefully they will look forward to wanting to be like them. Hopefully this will carry over into our practices and get our players to be more serious and put forth more effort.”
Chavez said right now the main problem they have is finding consistent pitching. “Right now, the two pitchers we have are not consistent. We need to find someone who can throw strikes and that will make us a better team. Consistent pitching will keep us in the game.”
Hitting is also very important in softball and according to Chavez they are making contact with the ball. “I am letting the girls swing away so they can see where they stand but we might have to go to playing small ball (bunting) but we do have hitters that can hit home runs. We just need to put more runners on base.”
Their defense is getting the job done. “We have a solid defense,” said Chavez. “We have six seniors starting on defense. I like our defense, but we have to find consistent pitching.”
Culver City’s next game is on the road against Hawthorne on April 7, at 3:15 p.m. Their next two home games are April 14, at 3:30 against Centennial and April 17, at 3:15 p.m. against Los Angeles Roosevelt at 3:15 p.m.
