Softball rout prompts coaches' meeting

Woodinville High School's 64-0 fastpitch softball win over Franklin last week prompted KingCo 4A Conference coaches to meet Tuesday night to discuss ways to avoid any embarrassing repeats.

The meeting was closed to the public but Tim Crowder, Juanita High School athletic director in charge of KingCo 4A fastpitch, said one proposal was changing the "mercy rule" — when a game is ended early because of a lopsided score.

A 15-run lead after three full innings would be added to the current standard, a 10-run lead after five innings. Fastpitch games normally last seven innings, and state rules require a game to go at least five innings to be official.

Another suggestion was moving Franklin to a full-time junior-varsity schedule for the rest of the season. The Quakers' struggling program has been shut out by 30, 24 and 13 runs in three other games.

But Crowder said a move to JV could be considered "a bigger slap in the face of the girls than getting shellacked."

Ideas will be forwarded to the conference's athletic directors, who will make a final decision.

Franklin principal Jennifer Wiley said her school's softball team will have to learn how to define success for themselves, apart from the scoreboard.

"Our program is about taking kids where they are and growing them from game to game," Wiley said. "We're not measuring success by wins and losses. ... Sometimes that puts us at the top of the heap, and sometimes it does not. There's so much more to athletics than winning, and we need to make sure we're cultivating all those things."

Wiley said there was no indication from her coaches or players at the March 21 game that Woodinville was running up the score. Woodinville coach Jim Weir said in a letter posted on his team's Web site that the Falcons stopped being aggressive — hit-and-runs, taking extra bases, tagging up — after taking a 7-0 lead.

Weir did not return phone calls seeking comment, but his letter on the team's Web site said, "Everything was done, short of making a mockery of the game, to end it."

But where's the line when it comes to good intentions? Weir doesn't know.

"There have been several other very unbalanced games this year in our league," he wrote. "At what point is it just too much? Twenty, thirty, forty runs? If this game does anything positive, it will point out the inequities in our league, rules that need to be changed and the role umpires can take in such an unbalanced game."

Many Eastside communities, including Woodinville, have strong youth leagues for fastpitch, with kids starting as early as 6 or 7 years old. That has translated to great success at the high-school level. In the last three years, Eastside KingCo 4A schools have combined to win two championships, a second and a third at the state tournament. Franklin has no such feeder programs, and has struggled against its Eastside counterparts since joining KingCo.

"You're asking kids without much experience to jump into this league and compete," Crowder said. "That's not going to happen. We need to do something from destroying those kids' self-image. We want them to want to play tomorrow and not feel so defeated, where they feel there's no sense in coming out again."

But Wiley said that's not taking into account her students' resiliency.

"They do keep coming back," Wiley said. "They are gaining and growing from it. You have to be real honest with them, 'This is what we're up against.' And you celebrate the heck out of their growth."

Michael Ko: 206-515-5536 or mko@seattletimes.com