There is only one high school in Southern California that has a baseball and softball team competing in CIF Southern Section championship games this weekend, and it’s not one of your usual customers.
Ganesha’s baseball and softball programs are both undefeated and have dominated at times like a Goliath during the regular season and in the playoffs.
On paper, Ganesha’s baseball and softball turnarounds looks like the stuff of legend, an ascension that would seem improbable, except the backstory is just as fascinating, and some now fear it could be the start of something that ruins the traditional high school experience.
But first the facts.
Ganesha’s baseball team, which has to play its home games at Garey High and practice offsite because its campus field is riddled with gopher holes, is 17-0 and will face Fillmore in the CIF-SS Division 7 championship at Blair Field in Long Beach on Friday at 1 p.m., looking for the school’s first title. The team has outscored its opponents this season 246-14, and outscored them in the playoffs 50-4.
The roster lists 26 players on MaxPreps that were not on the team that finished 10-12 a year ago, with only four players from last year’s team back. The Giants are believed to have multiple players with Division I college offers.
One of the players is senior Adrian Lopez, who is a Long Beach State commit.
CIF SS D 7 Baseball
Quarter Final
Ganesha 21, Fontana 0@SGVNSports @IESportsNet @PEcom_preps @IEPreps @James_Escarcega @LAVarsity pic.twitter.com/f3lL0QoLa6— Carlos A Páez (@carlospusd) May 13, 2023
Ganesha’s softball team is 15-0 and will play Ontario in the Division 7 championship Saturday at Deanna Manning Stadium in Irvine at 9:30 a.m., looking for the school’s first softball championship.
The softball team has outscored its opponents this season 221-6, and has outscored them 45-3 in the playoffs.
This comes one year after the Giants were 8-12.
CIF SS D7 Game Day
Softball Semi Final
Ganesha vs Tahquitz
At 11 AM @GaneshaHighPUSD @SGVNSports @James_Escarcega @IESportsNet @SGVTribune @LAVarsity @PEcom_preps @MaxPreps @PrepsRiver46513 pic.twitter.com/kKFEqtMsN9— Carlos A Páez (@carlospusd) May 13, 2023
There has been a lot of people asking how a school not known for its baseball or softball programs could become this good seemingly overnight.
There’s a very simple answer.
The school has an online-schooling program that has attracted numerous transfers, and that includes many of the newcomers this year to the baseball and softball teams, explains Ganesha athletic director and football coach Don Cayer, who also served as the school’s baseball coach for more than a decade.
Nearly all of Ganesha’s baseball players and many of its softball players are taking part in the online program that allows the players to essentially be home-schooled, with the exception of being on campus for testing.
The majority of the players on Ganesha’s baseball team train at EM Speed and Power in Rancho Cucamonga, multiple sources have confirmed for the Southern California News Group, and are enrolled in Ganesha’s online program so they can play high school baseball while taking classes online.
Cayer wouldn’t go into specifics about where the players on the baseball or softball team train when they’re not at Ganesha, or what steered them to the school.
On the CIF Southern Section transfer portal, Ganesha fills up multiple pages of transfer requests, far more than most schools. Most of its transfers were home-schooled previously, which allowed them to be granted immediate eligibility through “non-participation” the previous year.
For Cayer, what’s important to understand is that all of the new players on the baseball and softball teams have been approved through the CIF Southern Section.
“We didn’t break any rules,” Cayer said. “These are students that are enrolled at Ganesha High School (through its online program), and a lot of them previously were home-schooled or at elite charter schools and they got a taste of the online stuff and liked it. They (parents) didn’t want their kids in (traditional) high school settings.”
CIF-SS assistant commissioner Thom Simmons was asked this week if the Ganesha situation is something that has caught the eye of CIF-SS officials, and if there is a concern.
“Yes, we are aware of the number of baseball players that are part of this (online) program,” is all Simmons would say.
Some students are enrolled primarily in online courses and are only required at school for testing. Some are on campus and also participate in some form of online classes.
Cayer says the online program is beneficial to Ganesha’s enrollment numbers.
“We have about 1,000 kids, and I would say about 750 of them are online in some way or another, and for a school like ours, enrollment is down and this helps our enrollment.”
Ganesha isn’t the only school to have student-athletes in online programs, but few have used it to make an impact like the Giants’ baseball and softball teams.
Cayer argues that schools have been taking advantage of loopholes for decades to transform their programs, and for many years Ganehsa’s sports teams were on the opposite side of lopsided beatings because of it.
He acknowledges that Ganehsa may have taken the online program to a different level in terms of how it impacts a high school’s teams, and he understands why people are talking about it.
“This is the wave of the future,” Cayer said. “Not sure how else to explain it. We’re working with the rules that exist.”
La Salle baseball coach Andy Nieto, who also has coached at Damien and previously won four CIF-SS championships at Bishop Amat, raved about Ganesha’s baseball team and shared other thoughts.
“They could compete in Division 1, we played them in the fall,” Nieto said.
The San Gabriel Valley boasts several teams that play in Division 1: Bishop Amat, San Dimas, Bonita, Maranatha, La Mirada and Damien. Ganesha’s baseball team is competing this year in Division 7, the lowest division in the Southern Section.
“In terms of the San Gabriel Valley, they would be in the top three (teams),” Nieto said.
There are some involved in high school sports who are concerned that having teams made up primarily of online students is not what the high school sports experience is supposed to be about.
Nieto sees both sides.
“Look, with COVID, parents got an opportunity to see what home-schooling is all about, and it became a personal preference,” Nieto said. “There is nothing illegal being done here. There are schools that get a lot of transfers, there are schools that turn their programs around other ways.
“I would personally not want to take away the full high school experience from my kids, but if some families are comfortable with it, if that’s what they want to do, it’s their choice and you have to be supportive of that. It is what it is. If they weren’t in Division 7 winning like they are, I don’t think it would be as big of a (story) as it is now.”
Jesse Mendez resigned as Pomona’s baseball coach last year and is the event coordinator of the annual San Gabriel Valley all-star softball games. Mendez says he took great pride in getting the most out of his players, and he fears the online program that he says Ganesha is exploiting is hurting kids who are on campus and need to be involved in sports.
“It’s not easy coaching in Pomona, you got to do a lot of stuff yourself, and you’re there to mentor kids that need it,” Mendez said. “What they’re doing (Ganesha) is taking kids that grow up in Pomona and want to play sports at their high school, and shoving them aside for kids that aren’t from the area, and not even on campus.
“They’re taking other kids over Pomona kids who need sports to motivate them to do their homework. You take sports away from some of these kids and who knows, they may wind up on the streets. That is not what high school sports are supposed to be about.”
Current Pomona baseball coach Jose Miranda lost to Ganesha 22-0 and 20-0 this season.
Afterward, he thought, who are these guys?
“It’s my first year here, and the first thing when I saw them, I started counting. They had almost 30 kids,” Miranda said of Ganesha. “That’s like three teams, and they were big kids, a lot over six feet. I’ve been around the sport forever, and right away you could tell this was something different. Their nine players on the field were incredible, just incredible, and nothing that we could compete with.
“I was amazed. Just like, wow.”
Ganesha’s baseball coach, Tony Green, and softball coach, Tricia Joines, did not return calls seeking comment for this story.
Cayer said none of the returning players on Ganesha’s baseball and softball teams lost their spots on the teams if they came back this season. He said they all had a chance to try out for the team.
While Cayer defended the online program and the success of the baseball and softball teams, he chose not to comment when asked if he was comfortable with the new way things are being done instead of what is considered the traditional way, where neighborhood kids grow up in an area and play at their local high school.
“I’m going to leave that one alone,” Cayer said.
