Huskies Not Ready to Join the ‘Weak’ : North Hollywood beats Poly after taking offense to Schwal’s comments

NORTH HOLLYWOOD — Pity the Poly High baseball team.

North Hollywood does.

After defeating the Parrots, 5-1, in a Valley Pac-8 Conference game Tuesday at North Hollywood, Husky players and coaches began a tirade about what they interpreted as a lack of respect shown their team by Poly Coach Chuck Schwal.

“I feel sorry for Schwal,” North Hollywood pitcher Cesar Soto said. “Especially now that he has no competition.”

Soto’s anger stemmed from comments made by Schwal regarding the City Section’s plan for league realignment. In the proposal, Sylmar and Poly, traditionally the league’s top baseball teams, are placed in different leagues. Poly would still be grouped with North Hollywood.

“Now my good, young team has to play in a weak league,” Schwal told The Times last week.

Schwal’s comments, however, were only the latest slap to the Huskies’ pride. Despite its record, North Hollywood (22-6, 11-3 in conference play) is not ranked in The Times’ regional poll. Second baseman Ismael Rangsiyawong, who hit his 12th home run and drove four runs to raise his season total to 43, has gone unnoticed by the media, Husky Coach George Vranau said.

“He’s been slighted and slighted badly,” Vranau said of his hitting star.

Vranau was just as miffed about Schwal’s comments.

“As a group, we’ve taken on an us-against-the-world attitude,” Vranau said. “The only ones who need to believe in us is ourselves.”

Schwal said he never meant to slight North Hollywood and chalked up Vranau’s outrage to gamesmanship.

“I didn’t mean that at North Hollywood at all,” Schwal said. “They have a good program and it’s going to be that way for awhile and I’m happy about that. I told [Vranau] that before the game. I asked him if he was looking to get out of the league too, and he said yeah. He was just looking for something to motivate the team. That’s smart. If it helped them win today, then fine.”

Until Tuesday, North Hollywood had done little to convert skeptics. Losses to Sylmar, Poly and last-place Grant furthered the notion that the Huskies were not much of a threat.

North Hollywood played errorless defense and Soto (5-3) pitched a four-hitter and took a one-hitter into the seventh inning, striking out eight and walking two.

Rangsiyawong hit a three-run home run in the fifth. Poly is 16-11, 11-3.