Softball Clinic Draws Overflow Crowd of Girls

Jamie Moore, 13, of Simi Valley hit the equivalent of a home run when she signed up to play softball for the first time Sunday.

She attended the first-ever Simi Valley Girl’s Softball Instructional Clinic at Rancho Santa Susana Park, received expert instruction from the likes of Olympic softball team member Sheila Cornell and promptly won a $350 trip to a weeklong softball camp.

“It was cool,” she said. “I learned a lot of stuff. I’d never done this before.”

Moore’s reaction was typical of those attending the Simi Valley clinic. But the number of enthusiastic ballplayers preparing for the spring season overwhelmed organizers.

More than 350 girls ages 5 to 17 threw, slid and hit their way through the five-hour clinic. Response was so great that officials had to turn away about 50 would-be participants.

A modest $10 registration fee and summer-like weather may have played a part. But more likely, the response reflects the burgeoning interest in girls softball, organizers said.

For every boy who joins a baseball team, three girls sign up for softball, said Demetri Pagalidis, managing director of Canoga Park-based Baseball Development Centers Inc., which sponsored the event.

“It’s showing that girls have a purpose in sports,” he said. “Before, it was a male-dominated thing, [but] where baseball has leveled off, softball is going through the roof.”

Nearly 450 female players take to ball fields each spring as part of the Simi Valley Girls Softball league. More than 25,000 have passed through the league since its inception as Little Miss Softball in 1973.

Former UCLA star Cornell, 33, who attended Taft High in Woodland Hills, expects the sport’s popularity to continue to rise, especially with the visibility the first-ever Olympic team will receive in Atlanta this summer.

“One of the things about it becoming a medal sport is it gives these athletes one more steppingstone,” she said.

As important, Cornell said, is that girls no longer still have to seek inspiration from the Steve Garveys of the world, as she did in her youth.

“It’s neat for the girls to have female role models to look up to,” she said.

With more than half a dozen NCAA softball players and at least one head coach from a Pac-10 university tutoring at the clinic, Moore was thrilled with the level of instruction she received. Her mother, Karee Moore, was more impressed with her daughter.

“Did you see the way she played?” Karee Moore said. “She’s pretty good, huh?”

Registration is being taken for the softball season through Jan. 20. For information, call 527-0859.