Woodfin Takes Control for Sylmar

In his brief career as a member of the Sylmar High pitching staff, Olonzo Woodfin has had a dramatic impact on attendance at baseball games. A year ago as a gangly sophomore, he chased some fans from the stands--notably his parents.

Woodfin had less control of his temper than his 85 m.p.h. fastball, resulting in frequent outbursts on the pitching mound. He’d miss the strike zone or allow a hit, and the tantrum was under way. The worst part was the language. Woodfin issued a “bleep” with every base on balls.

“It got a little embarrassing for my mom and dad,” Woodfin said. “It would be obvious I was mad and there were obscene words. You could hear it in the stands. My parents had to talk to me, remind me that I wasn’t brought up that way.”

A year later, Woodfin has returned to the mound and the expletives have been deleted. His parents are back in the stands and they have plenty of company, including a gang of eager baseball scouts. In what ranks as one of the most overwhelming starts in Sylmar history, Woodfin has posted three straight dominating performances.

In the season-opener against Woodfin one-hit defending City champion Grant, 11-0. Fifteen of 21 outs were by strikeout. His next outing came in relief when he struck out 10 of the 12 batters he faced in the final 3 innings of Sylmar’s 12-7 win over Hollywood. In Sylmar’s fourth straight East Valley League victory on Thursday, Woodfin won his third game despite allowing his first earned run. He struck out 16 in a two-hit, 8-1 win over Fairfax.

The result is a stunning start in which Woodfin has 41 strikeouts in 17 innings to go with a 3-0 record and an 0.39 earned-run average. He has allowed only three hits and walked seven.

John Klitsner coached Dana Ridenour at Sylmar when he was the City 4-A Player of the Year in 1983. The former UCLA pitcher, now in the Yankees’ organization, dominated in high school but he was never like this, Klitsner said.

“I’ve never seen a kid get off to a start like this. It’s just phenomenal. He’s throwing three pitches for strikes--a fastball, a curve and a changeup. And he’s just going to get bigger, stronger and better.”

But first Woodfin had to calm down. At 6-4, 187 pounds, he has size and ability, but didn’t always have the composure to match. “Last year if I walked someone or got hit hard, I’d get rattled. I’d get mad at myself,” Woodfin said.

Klitsner made the emotional maturation of his prize left-hander a top priority in the off-season.

“He’s very competitive, high-strung. There’s a fire inside of him. If he didn’t throw his curveball for a strike, he’d come right back and try to throw his fastball with everything he had. Balls were flying all over the place,” he said.

“But he’s an intelligent kid. I talked to him, pointed out other pitchers and how they behaved on the mound. I showed him articles about pitchers and how they stayed under control. He reads, he listens and he’s made 100% improvement.”

Woodfin said he studied Mike Scott during last year’s National League playoffs. “I really liked the way he handled himself. He was on an even keel all through the playoffs,” he said.

Woodfin receives his next test Thursday when Sylmar plays at Poly, which is 4-0 in league and scored 24 runs in a league victory over Hollywood. Poly has its own junior left-hander in Greg Nealon, who is 2-0 and hasn’t allowed a run in nine innings.

Klitsner’s task is to keep Woodfin calm before that game.

“It’ll be interesting to see how he reacts when things don’t go well. I’ll just have to keep him under control and make sure he doesn’t overthrow the ball,” he said.

One thing he won’t do is use Woodfin anywhere else in the lineup, even though he’s a solid first baseman. “If he got up to hit and struck out he might go off the deep end,” Klitsner said. “I want him to worry about pitching only.”

No cause for alarm: Craig Raub, the Kennedy girls basketball coach, loses four starters from this season’s team, including his best player in Diane DeCree. But rival Valley League coaches who expect a Kennedy collapse should take a history lesson.

Kennedy lost four starters from last season’s team that won the City 4-A title. Kennedy bounced back to win its second straight City title and extend its league unbeaten streak to 90 games. The Golden Cougars (23-4) also became the first team in school history to win a state tournament game, advancing to the Southern California regional semifinals before losing to Point Loma on Thursday, 56-50.

“We’ve lost four starters before, but this team will be back,” Raub said. “I don’t like to use the word system, but we have a pattern at Kennedy where we have players in line to fill in.”

Kennedy loses DeCree, Yolanda Lewis, Maura Bowden and Felicia Williams, but Tisa Rush, who led the team in scoring the last three games in the playoffs including 20 points against Point Loma, will be back. “She served notice in the Point Loma game that she’ll be the premier player in the Valley next season,” Raub said.

Expected to contribute next season are April Ham, this year’s first player off the bench; backup forward Jennifer Wright, and point guard Maria Garcia.

Add Kennedy: DeCree’s high school career ended on a down note in San Diego. She scored only four points in the Point Loma defeat, but worse, had to sit out all but two minutes of the first half after she was whistled for three fouls in the first quarter.

“That was the quickest I ever got three fouls,” she said. “When I was sitting on the bench I thought someone had it in for me, but I had to stop thinking that big time.”

Even with DeCree on the bench, Kennedy trailed by just three at halftime, 27-24, with All-American Terri Mann scoring all but three of Point Loma’s points. Mann finished with 40. Still, Kennedy led, 50-49, with 1:03 remaining before Mann finished off the Golden Cougars.

With Kennedy ahead with a minute to go, Raub turned to his assistant, Pete Sullivan, and said: “Hey, we’ve got to be the proudest guys in the world. Win or lose tonight, our girls are winners.”

Said Raub afterward: “The only hard part is that we felt we could have won the game. If Mann had been out in the first half instead of DeCree, we would have beaten them to a pulp. It wouldn’t have been pretty.”