YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Titles seem to come with ease for the Yokota Panthers softball team.

But players and coaches say their three straight league championships didn’t come without a lot of grinding and sweat.

“We had to work for every single win” this season, said Bonnie Seeley, who has coached the team since arriving at Yokota in the fall of 1999. “No game was a piece of cake.”

The Panthers wrapped up their 2005 season on Saturday, splitting a doubleheader with Nile C. Kinnick on the Panthers’ home field. They finished 19-4, the most losses they’ve had since 2002.

But Yokota brought home the Department of Defense Dependents Schools-Japan season and tournament championships, as well as the Kanto Plain season title. And for the second straight year, the Panthers finished second in the Kobe Invitational Tournament.

“We had more competition this year than any other year,” said senior first baseman Darlene Seeley, the coach’s daughter. “The league was so equal this year.”

The wonder of it all, coach and players say, is how the Panthers manage to do so well every year, given the annual roster turnover.

Last year, half the roster was newcomers; this season, all but five players were freshmen and sophomores.

At the start of the season, “we thought we may have our work cut out for us,” Bonnie Seeley said. “We thought we may not finish first this year.”

After one particular practice, though, Seeley recalled senior third baseman Brittany Grizzard saying, “I think we’re going to be OK.”

Along the way, Yokota never stopped taking steps to make itself a better team.

“You can always improve,” senior shortstop Cari Bruschuk said. “You can never be satisfied.”

“Coach Seeley never accepts less than 100 percent,” Grizzard said. “We try to rise up to that.”

What all that led to was a difficult but unforgettable campaign for the seniors.

“We set the standard for what we expect next year, for the underclassmen to step up and keep up the tradition,” Bruschuk said.

Yokota takes second place in Kanto baseball tournament

According to Yokota baseball coach Brian Kitts, his Panthers pulled off a miraculous feat just to reach the championship game of the Kanto Plain tournament.

“Nobody thought we would get this far,” he said after Yokota lost 10-7 to the American School In Japan in Saturday’s championship game at Yokota Park.

The Panthers (18-10) were 15-3 overall before they lost ace right-hander Shawn Novak, who was removed from the team for undisclosed disciplinary reasons. That left Kenny Harris, Peter Weaver and Evan Gray to pick up the slack.

Yokota went 1-6 from that point until the tournament, ending the regular season by dropping a doubleheader to ASIJ at Fuchu Stadium last week. They entered the tournament with a 7-9 mark in Kanto Plain play.

But as the tournament began Friday, Yokota found its hitting stroke, pounding Yokohama International 28-6 in three innings, then reaching Saturday’s final by whipping St. Mary’s International 16-5 in five innings in the semifinals.

“They faced a lot of adversity this season and they stuck it out,” Kitts said.

It even looked as though Yokota would celebrate on its home turf after Kyle Shimabukuro’s solo homer and Harris’ RBI triple gave the Panthers a 6-4 lead in the top of the fourth.

But the Mustangs went ahead for good with four runs in the bottom of the inning. Weaver, who relieved Harris, walked Shawn Seevers with the bases loaded. Then an error — one of 13 in the contest — by shortstop Shawn Martel allowed two more runs to score. ASIJ made it 10-6 in the fifth on Nao Hiraoka’s two-run single.

Shimabukuro’s run-scoring single cut it to 10-7 in the top of the seventh, but ASIJ starter Hiroshi Mita held firm to the end.

“A couple of mistakes and it would have been our game,” Kitts said. “But I couldn’t be more proud of them.”

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