D’Errico Won’t Lounge Around

Simi Valley High baseball Coach Tom D’Errico is no snake charmer, but he’s gotten doses of venom several times a week this season.

D’Errico is in his second season as the successor to former coach Mike Scyphers, who won eight Marmonte League titles and had two nationally ranked teams in a memorable 17-year career.

“A lounge act trying to follow Elvis” is how D’Errico described his plight a year ago. But these days, some members of the audience are pelting him with verbal garbage.

By objective standards, D’Errico has done a good job with the Pioneers, who were 16-9 and 8-6 in Marmonte League play this season after winning one less game last season.

None of that seems to matter to a core group of Pioneer parents. Simi Valley games usually included disparaging remarks, insults and shouts directed at D’Errico, who has also taught science at Simi Valley for more than 20 years.

“At first the things they said in the stands bothered me, because you want everybody to love you,” D’Errico said. “But halfway through this season I realized it’s never going to happen.”

“Now, they can say what they want about me. All I ask is that they do it in a dignified manner because some of them can be pretty crude.”

Wiggins recovering: Canyon High basketball player Valerie Wiggins, an All-Valley second-team selection by the Times, suffered multiple injuries in a car accident Monday.

“There’s no permanent damage and she’s going to be good as new,” Coach Paul Broneer said of Wiggins, who has a compound fracture to her left arm, a broken left thumb, a broken rib and punctured lung, and a scratched cornea in both eyes.