COLTON — Mike Southworth is a collector.
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Colton’s Mike Southworth is on the verge of becoming just the fifth Inland high school softball coach to win 500 games. (John Murphy, Correspondent)
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Colton’s Mike Southworth is on the verge of becoming just the fifth Inland high school softball coach to win 500 games. (John Murphy, Correspondent)
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Southworth, as the Colton High School softball coach, collects victories. He has 499 of them in stints at Fontana, Chino Hills, and Colton. If all goes well, he will win his 500th on Wednesday when the Yellowjackets play Bloomington in a San Andreas League game at Kessler Park.
Southworth, 75, also collects antique bottles. Lots of them. While the former pastime is for enjoyment and exercise, the latter is an obsession.
“I like to collect things and organize them,” Southworth says. “They’re beautiful. The bottles are hand blown and different colors, and some of them have the name of the town embossed on them.”
ON A MISSION
It is a gray day in Rialto. Threatening clouds loom.
Colton leads host Eisenhower 7-0 in the fourth inning when the Yellowjackets outfielder Maleah Juarez steps to the plate. There is one runner on base and one out.
“Hey, pick her up Maleah. C’mon now,” Southworth yells from the first-base coach’s box.
Juarez scalds a single to center field to move the runner to third base in a 10-1 Colton victory.
The Yellowjackets (19-3) are seeking their first 20-win season since 2012. The team had losing records in the two years before Southworth’s arrival in 2024.
Eisenhower coach Laurie Dunbar-Smalls knows Southworth from when he coached at Fontana.
“Mike is just one of those old-school guys who does the little things well,” Dunbar-Smalls says. “When he was at Fontana, they were always an amazing hitting team, and that’s something I see in this Colton team.”
Colton shortstop Stephanie De La Cruz does her part. She hammers out four hits and drives in three runs against Eisenhower.
De La Cruz has no complaints.
“It’s going pretty good,” she says. “(Southworth) has a stricter emphasis. I feel like it’s a key element in keeping us focused.”
BORN TO COACH
A star basketball player at San Gorgonio High, Southworth is from a coaching family. His father, Harold “Stu” Southworth, coached baseball at Pacific and San Gorgonio high schools. His grandfather, Henry Foster, coached track and field at the University of Washington.
Mike Southworth is best known for coaching the Fontana High boys basketball team to the 1995 CIF Southern Section Division 1AA championship. He won 276 games in basketball coaching stints at Fontana, Aquinas and Nogales.
But for all of Southworth’s success as a coach, he has had two unusual exits from the sideline. He stepped down as the Fontana basketball coach in the middle of the 1996 season due to a heart condition. And he was pushed out of his Chino Hills softball job after 12 seasons and a section title due to an administrative decision.
The latter stemmed from an on-field incident. Southworth said the principal later wrote him a glowing letter of recommendation.
Now he thrives at Colton.
“It’s not about the wins and losses,” Southworth says. “It’s the satisfaction of having your team improve and play well and having a sense they can compete.”
UNUSUAL HOBBY
Southworth moves about his Upland home, dressed in a red Colton ballcap, gray sweatshirt, and sweatpants.
He carefully takes an ancient soda bottle out of a case and holds it in front of his face. Light from open blinds shines through the bottle. He is in his element.
Southworth collects Gold Rush-era soda bottles from the California Gold Country and to a lesser extent, pharmacy bottles from Redlands and Riverside. They are his passion.
“It’s his thing,” says Southworth’s wife, Michelle, a former special education administrator with the Fontana Unified School District. “He was doing it before we were even married.”
Southworth shows off bottles from Tombstone, Arizona; Sacramento, Bishop, San Jose, Berkeley, San Francisco, Truckee, and the ghost town of Bodie.
He examines an 1851 bottle from Sacramento.
“This company was unknown until a researcher found one tiny article in the Sacramento Union paper from 1852,” Southworth says. “All bottles blown in California before 1863 came from large glass houses in the East and were shipped around the horn to San Francisco, then out to towns associated with the Gold Rush.”
Asked why he enjoys collecting, Southworth quips, “I think it’s just the age of stuff, and now I’m there. I’m an antique.”
INLAND EMPIRE’S WINNINGEST SOFTBALL COACHES
(Win totals through games of Monday, April 28)
722: Rick Robinson (Centennial and Norco)
629: John Perez (Santiago, Carnegie, Notre Dame and Valley View)
627: John Ameluxen (Ayala)
603: Jo Ann Byrd (Corona)
499: Mike Southworth (Fontana, Chino Hills and Colton)
Note: All the coaches listed are still active except for Byrd
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