CARLSBAD — The varsity La Costa Canyon Mavericks beat Hilltop 13-1 on March 7. It was the kind of game that felt like the start of something. The next three games were not.
Granite Hills, March 10: a 4-3 loss. The Mavericks were a run away. Cathedral Catholic, March 12: 8-4. Southwest EC, March 14: 9-2. The score gets worse the further down the page you read.
The varsity record now sits at 7-11 in Coastal (NCC) League play. That is not, by any measure, a season anyone wants to be having.
The Numbers Below the Numbers
The data point that tends to get attention inside a baseball program is that the JV team is doing better than the varsity. JV sits at 10-6. The freshman squad is 10-5-2. Both are above .500. The varsity is 11 games into a losing record and has not yet found a stretch that suggests a turn.
This is not unusual. High school varsity teams can lose for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with the program's depth: graduating seniors, an injury to a key starter, a pitching rotation that cannot get through six innings. What it tells a coaching staff is that the talent is in the building. The varsity, on the field, is just not getting the results.
What Comes Next
The Coastal League is a tough league. Cathedral Catholic and Granite Hills both produce college-level players annually. Southwest EC has been on the rise for several seasons. A 7-11 mid-April record does not preclude a strong finish, but it does narrow the path to a CIF San Diego Section playoff bid.
For a program with 27 varsity-level sports and a long tradition of league championships across multiple disciplines, baseball is one chapter, not the whole book. But a JV team outperforming the varsity is the kind of detail that gets discussed in the dugout. The dugout knows.
Athletic Director Kari DiGiulio's office can be reached at 760-436-6136, extension 6007, for full schedule and ticket information.
Source: MaxPreps; LCC Athletics.