WSC Baseball Race Heading for a Tight Finish

For once it wasn’t just double talk.

After discarding their two-division format this season in favor of a single division with a postseason conference tournament, Western State Conference baseball coaches unanimously predicted an unprecedented race for the championship and berths in the state tournament.

And with one week left in the regular season, it looks as if they were correct.

Seven of the conference’s 11 teams--including College of the Canyons, Valley, Moorpark, Pierce and Glendale--are still in contention for a shot at postseason play.

Mission, the only Valley-area team that competes in the Southern California Athletic Conference, is vying for a playoff berth under first-year Coach John Klitsner.

Mission (7-9) is in third place in the SCAC behind Harbor (12-2-1) and East Los Angeles (6-8). Two teams from the conference automatically qualify for the state playoffs.

“It’s tight and it’s all just day to day,” Valley Coach Chris Johnson said of the WSC race. “It’s going to be fun because you get to see a little bit about what the kids are made out of.”

Ventura is atop the WSC standings with a 14-3 record, followed by eight-time defending-champion Canyons (12-4), Valley (10-6), Moorpark (9-8), Oxnard (8-8), Pierce (8-8), Glendale (8-9), Santa Monica (6-10), Santa Barbara (5-10), Bakersfield (5-11) and Cuesta (3-13).

With the conference’s deepest pitching staff and games against Oxnard, Cuesta and Pierce remaining, Ventura is favored to become the top-seeded team for the WSC’s five-team Shaughnessy playoff tournament. The tournament will be held May 2, 4 and 6 and will determine the conference’s top representative for the state playoffs that begin May 11.

“It’s not a comfortable lead,” said Ventura Coach Gary Anglin, who is trying to bring the school its first conference championship since 1974.

The first-place team at the end of the regular season receives a bye into the tournament championship game. The second-place team meets the fifth-place team and the third-place team meets the fourth-place team in first-round games. The winners play each other for the right to play the regular-season champion for the conference title.

Canyons Coach Len Mohney, whose team ran away with the past two conference titles, said that the opportunity to play in the tournament has contributed to a race that probably will not be decided until April 29, the last day of the regular season.

Moorpark will finish its regular season with games against Valley, Glendale and Oxnard. Glendale will finish with games against Santa Monica, Moorpark and Valley.