Softball gets a chance to represent San Mateo

The San Mateo team is comprised of girls between the ages of 11 and 14: Lei ‘Aloha Ah Tou, Erika Bagtas, Kiana Castro, Rae D’Amato, Ashley Driscoll, Hailey Fanucchi, Jacqui Landucci, Sydney Lee, Marlena Marshall, Ariana Naguit, Makayla Penate, Caitlin Regan, Julia Rosenberg, Leila Sadek, Claire Shelton, Brooke Umali and Nai’a Valencia.

“I had a pretty healthy tryout. We had around 50 kids try out. I had no clue (how many players) we’d have out there,” said Vince DeFriese, who, along with Nick Dykes, will serve as the team’s co-head coach. “It was open to any San Mateo girl. The girls that got selected … has played in our (SMYSA) league.

“We’ll be carrying 17 (players), which is a big roster.”

Jacqui Landucci has a longtime association with Toyonaka, as she will be the third generation of her family to take part in the exchange. Both her grandparents and her father, Dino Landucci III, participated as coaches with the San Mateo baseball delegation. Jacqui Landucci, however, will be the first Landucci to actually play in a game.

“My parents went in 1985, my dad as a coach and my mom as a chaperone,” Dino Landucci said. “I went as a coach in 1990 and with that group one of the most famous was Tommy Brady.”

When Landucci found out a softball team was being formed for the Toyonaka sister city exchange, there was no doubt his daughter was going to try out. She had been regaled with stories from her grandfather and father about their experiences for just about her entire life.

“She was all over it. She was excited about the opportunity and the chance to go to a different country,” Dino Landucci said. “I just told her there’s a (Landucci) legacy there. When I went, even though it was only 5 years since my parents had gone, there were still people in Toyonaka who still remembered the (Landucci) name.”

While the schedule is now set, there is one last hurdle to clear: the cost of sending a large contingent of softball players, coaches and chaperones around the world.

“We have serious fund raising to do. We have to raise $85,000,” DeFriese said, adding a GoFundMe page has been set up for the team at gofundme.com/sanmateotoyonaka-softball-exchange. “My hope is that [this trip] will happen for the girls (going forward). But we have to make this one work first.”

The first-ever softball exchange between the cities is the brainchild and hard work of DeFriese, who is the longtime president of the San Mateo Youth Softball Association.

“I got wind of [the baseball exchange] four, five years ago and thought, ‘Why aren’t the girls involved with this?’” DeFriese said. “I met with the mayor of Toyonaka (the last time the Toyonaka baseball team came to San Mateo) … and some other people. It went really well and then it went cold again.”

But DeFriese, along with the Nor Cal president of USA Softball, Mike Blondino, who happens to work for the city of San Mateo, kept pushing to get softball as part of the exchange.

The trip is not all about softball. It is a chance for these girls to get a chance to see and participate in a different culture. In addition to softball, the San Mateo players will attend a day of Japanese school, as well as take part in other cultural outings.

“(The players) are going to cultural classes, learning some simple Japanese expressions, because that’s important,” DeFriese said.

There were a number of hurdles to clear to get this softball tour off the ground. While softball in the United States uses a model similar to Little League baseball, DeFriese said in Japan, softball teams are administered through school districts. It took DeFriese a while to explain to his Japanese counterparts how the system works in the United States.

“That put a block on it for a while,” DeFriese said. “I did a dossier on our softball association and finally convinced them how we work. They bought into it and finally got the ball rolling.”

The other major issue was the timing. The baseball exchange happens during the summer, but the softball tour will occur during the school year. Since members on the team include both middle schoolers and high school freshmen, DeFriese had to go to two separate school districts — the San Mateo-Foster City Elementary School District and the San Mateo Union High School District — to work out scheduling.

“The [baseball teams] go in August. But, one, I heard it’s super, super hot (during that time in Japan), and two, girls are still playing summer ball. We figured October would be a good time,” DeFriese said.

Donation checks can also be mailed to: SMSCA Attn: Toyonaka Softball, P.O. Box 729, San Mateo, Ca., 94401.