Softball: Woodbridge Classic has lost its luster
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There was a time, several years ago, when the Woodbridge Classic was my favorite softball tournament of the season. It’s still well-run, and things are still done first-rate, but the tournament is not the same anymore.
A lack of equitable pairings had some of the better teams looking elsewhere, not because they wanted an easy go of it, but because they wanted a fighting chance to compete. And because they saw tournament host Woodbridge make things inordinately soft on its side of the bracket.
No one faulted Woodbridge for playing a couple of weak teams to ensure it was in the winners bracket and played at the primary site as the tournament host.
But putting most of the tournament’s best teams on one side of the bracket -- which happened on an extreme scale a few years ago -- was a huge red flag. It made for some killer games, but it also made the championship anticlimactic compared to the quarterfinals.
That bothered me, because it reflected so poorly on Woodbridge Coach Alan Dugard.
Dugard was a fighter pilot in the Korean war, if I recall correctly. He deserves as much respect, perhaps more, than any coach in the Southland. Right or wrong, his credibility was eroding because of this stupid one-sided scheduling of his tournament year after year.
No one should think of Dugard in such fashion. He is too good a man. Yet they were.
Many top teams have moved on, most notably to the Michelle Carew Classic that is hosted by Anaheim Canyon. It’s a tough tournament, but it’s tough throughout for everybody, not just the bracket opposite Woodbridge.
La Palma Kennedy, Valencia, Lakewood, El Toro and Garden Grove Pacifica are among the teams that left Woodbridge. Those teams are ranked, respectively in the Southland, Nos. 2, 3, 8, 10 and 19. They’re spending this day at the Canyon tournament, but none of them reached today’s championship semifinals. Like I said, it’s a tough tournament.
My experience has been that great coaches don’t mind the competition, but they do want it to be fair. The best team in the tournament shouldn’t burn up all its pitching to face an opponent that had a free ride to the championship.
I commend Woodbridge -- which used to be one of the outstanding programs in the Southland -- for matching itself against Mission Viejo in its three-team pool at Bill Barber Park. That is a first step toward restoring Woodbridge’s credibility within the tournament. Mission Viejo is ranked No. 15, and is the only ranked team in the lower half of the bracket.
But perhaps the two best teams in the tournament, No. 7 El Modena and No. 9 Marina, are in the same pool. They face each other at 8 a.m., on the first day of the tournament. What could be the tournament’s championship game next Saturday will be over before breakfast today.
The winner of that pool might then be matched against the only other ranked team, No. 25 Foothill, in the quarterfinals.
It’s that kind of silliness that has impacted this tournament in recent years. And it’s a shame, because it used to be one of the great ones. And I miss it.
-- Martin Henderson
-- Image from www.gowoodbridge.com