The562’s coverage of Long Beach Poly is sponsored by Bryson Financial.
After practice earlier this week, Long Beach Poly softball coach Elizabeth Sanches was getting her steps in on the campus’ tennis courts. As she walked, she stopped occasionally to bend down and pick up softballs. This is part of her daily routine–patrolling the tennis courts to pick up homerun balls from her Jackrabbits’ batting practice.
“(Poly tennis coach) Monty hates us,” she said with a laugh.
The Jackrabbits’ big bats have powered them to the brink of history, and the tight-knit squad is hoping to make history Saturday morning at 10am when they face Warren in the CIF Southern Section Division 4 championship.
Poly has never won a CIF-SS title in softball–one of just four sports at the school to have not won a title (along with boys’ volleyball and the newly-added lacrosse teams). This year’s squad has battled significant injuries this year, but has packed a rare power in these playoffs with bats like Ki’ele Ho-Ching, Emoni Lam Sam, Kween Tauala and many others.
Poly has scored 38 runs in their four playoff games, including 33 in the last three rounds. The Jackrabbits defense and pitching have come through in big moments as well, but it’s the bats that have brought them to this point.
“I live, eat, and breathe for offense, I do,” said Sanches. “They say a team can be a reflection of the coach, and I have always had a big bat mentality, I was raised on that. My coaches rarely gave bunt signs, my coaches would give us a green light at three and oh, because they had confidence in us. Oftentimes for young ladies, when you know that somebody believes in you, that’s all it takes.”
For Poly’s stars like Ho-Ching and Lam Sam, this opportunity to make history can’t be passed up.
“It’s an honor,” said Ho-Ching, an Oklahoma commit and the top-ranked recruit in the junior class. “No Poly team has made it further than us, we set that standard for ourselves. This year we’re all strong and we have a lot of great chemistry.”
Lam Sam stressed that the team’s chemistry is what’s driven this historic playoff run.
“These are my cousins and even the girls who aren’t related to me feel like family,” she said. “We have a sisterhood here, and we can make history and put a banner up–that would be amazing, knowing we’d be the first to do it.”
Ho-Ching agreed with her teammate and said the Jackrabbits are going into the game as a true team.
“We all love each other, that’s what this team is,” she said. “We love each other like sisters–we fight like sisters and argue like sisters too. But we also hang out outside of school all the time. I feel like girls, when they’re around each other so much, sometimes they end up not liking each other. But we have such a healthy team it’s easy to be around each other.”The Jackrabbits will face the Bears at 10am Saturday in Irvine at Deanna Manning Stadium. Tickets are available by clicking here: https://gofan.co/event/3439804?schoolId=CIFSS.
