Royal, Simi Valley Seek Frosh Teams

This season, for the first time, the baseball programs at Royal and Simi Valley highs will field freshman teams, which only means bad news for the rest of the Marmonte League.

Unlike the league’s other six teams, Royal and Simi Valley offer grades 10 through 12 only and have never participated in the Marmonte’s freshman baseball league. Both will become four-year schools in September, 1996.

Royal and Simi Valley won’t join the freshman league until next season, but their first ninth-grade teams will play makeshift schedules this year. The additional teams come at no expense to the Simi Valley Unified School District, whose board is expected to approve the formation of the teams at Tuesday’s meeting.

The booster clubs for each program will raise money to fund the teams. Royal’s first freshman coach is Tom Matsamitsu, an assistant with the junior varsity. Simi Valley has yet to name a freshman coach.

Simi Valley varsity Coach Mike Scyphers welcomes the new team, saying it will improve an already imposing program. In Scyphers’ 16 years, the Pioneers have won 10 league titles, including seven of the past nine. Twice the team has been ranked No. 1 in the nation.

Royal has placed among the top three teams in the league each of the past three seasons.

“Finally, we’re going to be on a par with the other teams in the league who have always had 60 players in their programs to our 40,” Scyphers said.

“It will be nice to develop a core of freshmen who can play together for four years.”

While Simi Valley is still working on its schedule, Royal has agreed to play in a series of eight Saturday doubleheaders with five other freshman teams at Kennedy High from March 25 to May 13. The other teams are Birmingham, Chatsworth, San Fernando, Sylmar and Kennedy.

Basketball

Kotasha Gowin and Savona Muse have quit the Sylmar High girls’ basketball team for personal reasons. Gowin, a sophomore forward, averaged a team-best 12.5 rebounds and was second on the Spartans with a 13.3 scoring average. Muse, a junior, started at point guard.

Neither played in Sylmar’s Valley Pac-8 Conference season finale on Friday, a 61-58 loss to Van Nuys.

The Camarillo girls’ basketball team received the Marmonte League’s fourth automatic playoff berth Friday when it won a tie-breaking coin toss with Channel Islands and Westlake.

All three teams had tied for fourth place with 6-7 league records.

The three teams split games with one another and had identical records against the other five league schools, leading to the coin toss, the third criterion of the Marmonte tiebreaking system.

Contributing: Dave Desmond, John Lynch.