How a baseball coach led Mission College to a

When Joe Cascione walked into the athletic director’s workplace at Los Angeles Mission College with the concept of beginning a girls’s tennis workforce, he knew how it might sound. He had spent his complete life in baseball—27 years as a coach—and had never coached girls or a racquet sport.

“I told him, ‘I have an idea. I’d love to start a women’s tennis team. I don’t have any background in tennis, but I think I can surround myself with people who know the technical side of the sport, and I love it so much that I think we can do well,’” recalled Cascione, a profitable former baseball participant at Pierce College and Cal Lutheran.

It was comprehensible that few understood the choice.

“Everyone thought I was going through a midlife crisis,” Cascione said with a snigger. “They’d say to me, ‘What are you doing? You’re having a breakdown.’”

College directors also questioned if it wouldn’t be better to have a girls’s soccer workforce, given the demographics of the San Fernando Valley. But Cascione offered them with a listing of potential gamers who might attend Mission College.

“At first I was against it,” recalled Steve Ruys, director of athletics at Mission College. “I told him that women’s soccer was better for this area. But he was persistent.”

Four years later, the gamble paid off in a big manner. Last April, the Mission College Eagles received the first California Community College Athletic Assn. (CCCAA) state workforce championship in the varsity’s historical past, and they did so with a excellent 25-0 report.

Not only did they win the group faculty’s first championship, but they did so with local gamers and against powerhouse faculties—some of which even fielded worldwide gamers. Unlike other faculties, Mission College doesn’t have its own tennis courts and rents courts at a close by park to observe and play its home matches.

In CCCAA tennis, faculties face off against each other in workforce matches. Each match consists of a set quantity of singles and doubles matches, and the winner is decided by the workforce’s cumulative rating.

In the ultimate of a four-day event in Ojai, Mission College confronted Sierra College — the top seed from Northern California and also undefeated — and received a dramatic match. The Eagles dominated the doubles, but Sierra fought back in the singles and took a 4-3 lead.

Then, Genesis Nochez (West Ranch) tied the collection at 4-4, and all the things got here down to Josilyn Rivera (Birmingham) in a head-to-head match against Autumn Holmes of Sierra. To add to the drama of the day, Rivera misplaced the first set, bounced back with a 6-1 victory in the second and clinched the championship in a tiebreak she received without giving up a single level, for a ultimate rating of 3-6, 6-1, 7-6 (7-0).

In addition, the duo of Jaelyn Rivera (Birmingham) and Priscilla Grinner (Granada Hills) have been topped state doubles champions after defeating a Chabot College pair.

Amy Nghiem takes a shot during Mission College observe at El Cariso Regional Community Park in Sylmar.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

“I had always thought about winning the Ojai tournament, but I never thought it would actually happen,” said Grinner, 19, a two-time CIF champion with Granada Hills.

“Winning that tournament meant everything to me and my family; it was like giving back to the community where I grew up, and that meant so much to me,” said Jaelyn, 20, Josilyn’s older sister.

Amy Nghiem was one of Mission College’s key gamers. The Granada Hills Charter alumna joined the Eagles alongside her teammates Grinner and América Fragoso, both from Granada Hills.

Cascione was also named Western State Conference coach of the yr.

For the gamers, the sense of teamwork that the coach instilled was important to building a aggressive program.

“The coaches encourage us to be our best. Without our teammates, without that connection, without that camaraderie, and without all the time we spent together, it wouldn’t have been possible,” Grinner said of the championship.

Jaelyn Rivera serves during her workforce’s observe at El Cariso Regional Community Park in Sylmar.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Cascione stepped down as head baseball coach at Mission College in 2019 after 19 years at the helm of this system. Then got here the pandemic — and with it, a yr and a half to replicate on what the next step in his athletic and skilled life could be. The reply lay in the other sport he had beloved since childhood, as he had always performed tennis in his free time.

“If I had to do it all over again, I’d probably choose to play tennis instead of baseball,” confessed Cascione, who was twice named State West Conference coach of the yr in baseball. “Baseball was my life, and I owe it everything. But there’s something about tennis. When I was seven, I’d watch it on TV and enjoy every minute of it.”

But convincing the first feminine gamers to be a part of a new tennis program — in the midst of a pandemic and without its own courts — was no straightforward job. In the group faculty system, recruitment is essential, and competing against faculties such as Glendale, College of the Canyons, and Pierce—which have their own amenities—is always an uphill battle for Mission College.

“I couldn’t tell them, ‘We’re going to be a good team,’’ Cascione said. “I really didn’t know. ”

Nor was it straightforward to persuade a tennis participant to be a part of a program led by a baseball coach. That’s where another of Cascione’s strengths got here into play: his candor.

“The only thing I kept telling them was, ‘You’re going to work hard, and you’re going to have a coach who’s going to push you to your limits and who’s going to be there for you every time we’re on the court,’” Cascione said. “There has to be a belief that, even when things go wrong, you’ll hear your teammates cheering you on. And that’s not something you mention just once or twice; it’s something we talk about almost every day in this program.”

Seven younger girls accepted the problem in the first yr and 9 in 2023. Faced with a lack of devoted amenities, Cascione utilized the same philosophy he used when his baseball workforce had to rent a discipline: adapt and overcome the impediment.

In its first season, in 2022, the workforce stunned everybody by ending second in its division in the State Western Conference. Since that first season, Cascione has labored to deliver the team-oriented mindset he preached in baseball over to tennis.

“I think he’s very articulate,” said Grinner, who hopes to switch to Cal Lutheran after this yr to play alongside her teammate Jaelyn. “He’s able to explain things to you and encourage you even when you’re feeling really, really down, and I think that’s one of his best qualities.”

Said assistant coach Yulia Zhytelna, “First and foremost, he’s a baseball coach, and on the court he shows exactly who he is — in the way he talks, how he cheers, and how he addresses the girls. He doesn’t try to hide anything; that’s just who he is, and I’ve loved that about him.”

Recruiting the proficient Nghiem was one of the championship workforce’s best successes. Cascione himself gave her a tour of the varsity.

“It’s not a very big school, but they’ll go above and beyond for you. They’ll stand by you,” said Nghiem, who also highlighted the workforce’s tradition of camaraderie. “We all went to practice every day. Even if you were sick, you were there. You didn’t have to practice, but you were there. You always supported each other.”

Mission College, positioned in an space with a strong Latino presence in the northern San Fernando Valley, competed against applications with a long historical past, their own amenities and worldwide gamers —such as Glendale, College of the Canyons, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Santa Monica — so the teaching employees was key to instilling a optimistic mindset in the gamers, without letting them get pigeonholed.

“Not many people see us as a community capable of achieving something this big,” said Jaelyn. “So being able to bring the title home to this community really shows the people around us—our peers, our community, and our ethnic group — that it’s possible to achieve something when you put in all your effort.”

Cascione, initially from New York, has lived in the San Fernando Valley since childhood and attended St. Genevieve High in Panorama City. He emphasizes that his teaching employees, which is also deeply rooted in the group, understands the realities of their gamers’ lives.

“Many of these young women face challenges in various ways. Many hold down two jobs; some come from broken homes and need our support,” said Cascione, who was mentored by Bob Lofrano at Pierce College and Rich Hill at Cal Lutheran.

His assistants, Porfirio Cervantes and Zhytelna — a former Cal State Northridge participant who is now a skilled — also keep strong ties to the Valley group.

“I’ve seen the girls’ motivation, especially among the freshmen,” said Zhytelna, the feminine voice on the teaching employees and a mentor to the gamers. “I’ve seen in their eyes that they want to give their best.

“At the end of the day, tennis is just a game, and you have to enjoy it — because that’s how the best experiences come about, when you’re enjoying yourself.”

At a group faculty, where the gamers change every one or two years, continuity relies upon on the tradition being handed down from one technology to the next.

“The most effective way is through the players themselves,” explained Cascione. “The sophomores pass it on to the newcomers. We talk almost every day about being a great person, a great sister, a great daughter and they have to believe that all of that contributes to making a great tennis player and a great team.”

For Cascione, the success of the tennis program at Mission College — a college with fewer than 10,000 college students — boils down to one phrase: perception.

“The moment you let someone tell you that you can’t, you’re letting negativity in,” said the coach. “Here, we dream big. Sometimes we’ll fall short, but we’re always going to give it our all.”

The outcomes are already starting to show across the whole athletics division. Mission College just lately launched its males’s tennis program — also that includes local gamers — utilizing the same formulation that led to the ladies’s workforce’s success.

Mission College is presently in the first part of construction on its own amenities, which is able to embody soccer and softball fields. Phase two will embody tennis courts.