Westlake a nemesis to Lancers in softball

By Wayne Harrison wharrison@theacorn.com

The Thousand Oaks softball team has won four of the last five Marmonte League championships and a California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) championship in 2001.

Yet when Westlake defeated Thousand Oaks 5-4 earlier this season in a game played at Thousand Oaks High School, it marked the eighth consecutive time that the Warriors have defeated the Lancers.

"I didn’t think we played well at all," said T.O. head coach Gary Walin. "We played nowhere near how we played our first six games."

The Lancers were 6-0 coming into that contest.

"I didn’t think any phase of our game was very good," Walin said. "I thought that we were very anxious, we were very nervous. Westlake has had our number since we won the CIF in 2001 and most of the games against them—except for a couple—we have played probably as poorly as we could play."

Combine that with the Westlake players doing well when the two teams meet and the result has been a Warrior winning streak.

"You’ve got to give what I would call their star players a lot of credit," Walin said. "They have stepped up and really come through when it’s counted. Monica Gonzales, Megan Shie and Stephanie Savre have really stepped up and played well and have been the difference in the games."

Walin added, "Michelle Rehm has been pretty tough on us, too."

For some reason, according to the Lancer coach, his players haven’t responded against Westlake in recent years—maybe because the Lancer players press when playing Westlake.

"The girls put more of an emphasis on the game," Walin said of the Westlake- T.O. matchup. "I think they just want to get over the hump mentally with this. Their players have stepped up and taken advantage of some of our mistakes and their stars have gotten clutch key hits when they needed them."

Walin added, "It a little bit of a combination of both us not playing our best games against them and the fact that they’ve had a couple of their players play very well against us."