to 3/11 @1:07:

You are referring to Brooke Cowell, right!

the below was to 3/11 @1:00pm

You better check yourself. Maranatha has played SP each of the last three years and has beaten SP 2 out of the 3 years. Yes, last years was a bad game but giving up 10+ walks a game most teams will lose to even a poor team yet alone a stud pitcher like pareda.

Heck CV got 15 HITS against FSH this year. I'd like to see a rematch with the maranatha pitcher fresh and in shape. She did help her schools soccer team to a one loss season before joining the softball team about 3-4 weeks ago!

Why are you such a Maranatha hater?

Smhs outsmarted the pasadena star news sports section again...no wonder they produce better SAT scores than the entire sports writer staff...their 5-0 really deserve for the #1 ranking???...congrat to SMHS for successfully getting their recognition...watch out for SMHS softball people in town are talking of winning league and cif title.

How'd La Canada do the past 2 games (no reports)? They appeared improved from a year ago. Tomorrow they play Harvard-Westlake who is in the very tough Mission league but H-W seems to be off to a rough start. Maybe LC can pull the upset. Good luck LC and represent the Rio Hondo well.

The stats. that SP submitted to Maxpreps say the so-called #2 started and pitched 4 innings, 16 BF, 1 R, 2 H, 1 BB, and 3 K. The so-called #1 came in in relief and pitched 3 innings, 12 BF, 2 R, 3 H, and 3 K. Not quite a "shutdown" but nonetheless good outings by both pitchers.

Team stats are:
SP: 10 H, 2 E, and 7 R
Arcadia: 5 H, 5 E, and 3 R

No doubt that Temple City will be much more of a test (as mentioned before, Arcadia is no where near the same competition as the last couple of years)and SP's game with TC should give an early indication of who's the top of the Rio Hondo League. Hard at this point to make judgements on San Marino because they haven't played any where near the level of competition as other teams. Same thing happened last year and once SM got to league play they really struggled. We'll see this year.

They didn't score those runs against that pitcher.

fyi a "shut down" usually implies no runs, but if arcadia scored 3 then good for them

Any other scores?

I agree but there is some value in the difference in divisions.

By the way SP 7- Arc 3.

SP pitched their #2 most of the game, who shut down Arcadia.

You are giving the Div. levels way to much credit as the ultimate indicator of competitivenss. Any good D5 team (with an excellent pitcher like the one in South Pas) could beat a D3 team, especially one in the current state of Arcadia. Div. levels give some competitive indication but has more to do with school size. Drop in a top pitcher into a D5 program with a reasonable supporting cast, that team will pull it's share of wins, even off of D1, 2, or 3 competition.

Anon 10:59,

Hold on a second, Arcadia is still a D3 team and SP is a D5 team. I would not characterize this game as a easy win for SP by any means.I don't care what has happened in Arcadia's program.

I would say lets have stories for people who participate on the blog the most. Softball fans participate a lot.

To hold up the PSN pre-season ranking as a meaningful indication of a team's competitiveness is wrong and these preseason rankings are more an indication of last year's results with no consideration as to strength of schedule. Even the Monrovia team would tell you that they are no where near the same team as last year and this year will be a very big rebuilding year. Most recognize that Monrovia still has 1 very good player from last year's team, but she only bats once every 9 batters and isn't a pitcher.

Doubleheaders are extremely routine for any good softball pitcher and I'm sure wasn't an issue to the Maranatha pitcher and she wouldn't use that excuse. Maranatha - CV was a gross mismatch and if Maranatha were to play CV 100 times they'd lose 100 times. If Maranatha was in any of the 3 other Duarte pools I think they might have been able to muster one win. Previous blogger said Maranatha wouldn't be in the top 12 in Duarte ... I think that's a little harse ... In my opinion I'd put them 8th or 9th. Yes, same tournament rules for everyone but Maranatha no where near played the same competition as in the other pools. Also, Duarte is a very unique tournament in that they allow coaches to influence (and dare I say manipulate) the tournament schedule they play. If any team wants to be considered a good team they should play some decent competition. Beating both poor in-league competition and poor pre-season non-league competition doesn't make a team competitive, especially opposite other area competitve teams. Maranatha, challenge yourselves with some reasonable competition and put a few competitive area teams on your schedule like a Rio Hondo team like Temple City or South Pas and maybe you'll get the consideration you claim.

If it's a matter of a game someone's kid played in, that's where the boxscore comes in. If the coach calls in the boxscore, it should make the paper and prep site. If you're argument is that we should have covered another game instead of the third-place game, I'm not sure how that would be a good idea regardless of how the teams are seeded and the like. If it's not a true third-place game, that's a tournament issue, not ours. The only reason we (Star-News) didn't cover the championship game is because there weren't any area teams involved.

Can we all agree that this is a softball post? Why didn't anyone post game information from the tournament? People have done so during the other sports. That's why these posts are here to talk about softball. If all you want to do is bicker because the Star-News only covered three days and devoted four days over softball coverage (see track, volleyball, tennis and swimming to see how many games we've covered) you're missing the point. You could've posted info right here all along.

any game that (insert anonymous' daughter's name) team played !

Anon: Give me an example of which matchups would have been better? And as far as performances, we run boxscores of games that don't have stories written about and, for the first time, run those on our prep site every day as well as putting them in the paper.

You have got to be kidding me!

If you want your school covered more get to a meaningful game? The 3rd place game ended up 10-0. So what. Especially when Marantha played what tantamounted to an early season double header 4 hours apart... Look at the box score 6 Errors and a bunch of singles by CV. If I recall the article correctly the same pitcher (Summers) threw both games too... I hear the 1st inning "HR" was really a single and an error on an outfielder...

OK Maranatha had a bad game. So does every team from time to time. Heck SP is 0 and 3 mustering only one hit in their last game and giving up 11 runs in their last two. They are still one of the areas best. While San Marino is 5and0 but hasn't played anyone?

If I'm not mistaken every team in the Duarte Tourny had the same set of rules and same opportunity to reach that 3rd place game?? Maranatha had to get past Monrovia who was ranked by both the Star News and CIF.

Let the season run it's course and the cream usually rises.

PSN keep up the good work

South Pas -Temple City is a very good upcoming match-up. SP's strong suit is pitching, and for TC it's their hitting and fielding.

Also, 2 good coaches.

exactly ... the south pas - arcadia match-up would have been great last season. but this season, with it being a big rebuilding year for arcadia, it won't be as competitve a match-up as last season. nonetheless, it's always great seeing the south pas pitcher play.

The only objective way for the PSN to identify good match-ups is by being out and about watching various area teams. The problem with using blog postings as your main guide to quality match-ups is because bloggers understandably have there own agendas and their points-of-views tend to be focused on promoting their own teams. Just look at the Top 10 discussion a couple of weeks ago. Any objective person would have never put a number of those teams in the Top 10. Also, using early season W-L results as a guide to who the good teams are is also flawed. the same teams every year promote their team's W-L record as a reason for their teams quality, but the real reason is their unwillingness to have a competitve schedule and play good teams. Those teams get slaughtered when they occassionally get stuck playing a decent team and they couldn't control their schedule (like what happened in Duarte). Also, a couple of the area leagues are competitive within their own leagues, however, their teams get beat very badly in non-league games with area teams. And vice versa, a couple of teams in far more competitve leagues, don't challenge themselves with decent non-league competition and their W-L gives an early season false read on the quality of their team. PSN, do your best to get out to see a number of teams and you'll quickly see the teams that are most news worthy.

scott, I think you are missing the main point of the bloggers. I don't think you should take it as an attack, but rather a legitimate observation. I think the bloggers are more pointing out an issue of quality vs. quantity. there have been far better news worthy softball match-ups that could have been reported on and were totally missed and had no PSN coverage. I'm sure people recognize the resources issues but in previous years the PSN appeared to be more effective at covering the interesting softball games and reported on some of the individual excellent performances too.

A Local Softball blog can help with local coverage and free up the reporters to do the detailed stories, but it would take a few dedicated posters to make it work. If several team fans provide input it becomes the place to go for the latest information. If to many just bad mouth and few provide anything good then people look elsewhere. If you do away with anonymous posters you eventually learn who knows what they are talking about. I saw it work with Girls Water Polo on another blog (not a newspaper). I could get scores faster than waiting for the "official" coverage and some opinions about the games. Its OK to ask for more but its better to contribute to the effort.

As I said before, we covered three games in four days last week and ran a notebook on the tournament on another day. To say softball is getting the short end of the stick is rediculous and baseless.

Certainly not the fault of the PSN that the game was a blowout but if the PSN had more active coverage of softball, the far more interesting non-blowouts could be easily identified in advance. As was abundently pointed out on this blog previously, the format of the Duarte Tournament creates many non-newsworthy blowouts year-in, year-out, and to select interesting games by Duarte Tournament seeding is a mistake. The 4th seed was clearly not in the top 12 teams at Duarte, and the 3rd seed was clearly 1st or 2nd seed. As Anon 8:45, mentioned: "there have been so many interesting softball match-ups the past couple of weeks between far more competitive area teams and some very noteable individual performances and none have been reported on by the Pasadena Star News". Any objective eye would recognize that softball is getting the short end of the stick by the PSN.

By the way Arcadia plays South Pas tomorrow in Arcadia.

Anon, we were busy covering the state basketball playoffs. By the way, Muir girls basketball is a girls sport. The softball game we covered was the third-place game. We can't control the fact that it was a blowout. If there were area teams in the championship game, we would've covered that. Also, we nad a photographer at one game, and were supposed to have a photographer at the third-place game, but they changed the time on us so the photographer had to go elsewhere. In all, we covered three games from the tournament and had a softball notebook last week, so to say we're not covering softball is an incorrect statement.

I agree, and its a bummer. But I dont think its a battle with football. It just seems that over the last couple weeks, softball hasn't gotten its time. It is softball season. Plus whenever there is a thread connected to a softball story there is a heavy response from softball fans. By the way softball in this area has been sending more kids to D1 schools than almost any sport in the area.

Scott, I respectfully disagree. Last week at the Duarte Tournament there were 40 games amongst 16 teams over a 5 days period. To the best I recall the PSN reported on one. Not to mention, that one game reported on was the most uncompetitive and biggest mismatch of the entire tournament. There were many other very competitive games between area teams that were missed entirely. In previous years he PSN reporters and photographers were prevelant at this tournament in particular. The football stories may be breaking news but given that it's softball season and there have been so many interesting softball match-ups the past couple of weeks between far more competitive area teams and some very noteable individual performances and none have been reported on by the Pasadena Star News. As compared to previous years, there has been almost no game coverage by the PSN. It may not be your intent, however, it appears that the PSN has no interest in girls sports, softball in particular.

It's funny that you say that, but football fans say I don't do enough. We've been doing a football thread a week, hardly a lot, to keep football fans coming onto the blog. The Garrison story is breaking news, so that's why it's there. We do plenty on softball as well.

Scott it is amazing how many stories you do on football compared to other spring sports. It doesn't seem like the response is any better for them. But you sure do raise interesting subjects in football as opposed to any other spring sport.

Burbank's non league will have them ready to win the Pacific.

It is going to be interesting to see who's nonleague schedule will have them most prepared for league.

10-0 (in 6 innings) Crescenta Valley

Don't be so sure that CV will mercy. I heard the plan was to pitch their #2 and that they would be missing several of their other key starters for that game. I predict upset.

CV will probably mercy them.

It should be a good night for softball. Etiwandas pool seem kinda week. I hope that Covina will give them a challenge. They seem to be a decent team. I did not expect either team to be in the championship. Now the CV vs Maranatha game should be good. I think that CV will come out on top.