Family makes room for six

Note to readers: This is the second in a series of three profiles of families hosting Sterling players during the Little League Softball World Series in Portland, Ore. PORTLAND, Ore. - Six giggly, Guitar Hero-playing girls. Ten fun-filled days and nights. Five years running. Those numbers add up to the Little League Softball World Series for David Kawasaki, a CPA, his wife Regina, a middle-school educator who teaches handicapped kids, and their daughter, Lauren, 15. The Kawasakis are one of three host families that have opened their homes to girls from the Sterling 11- and 12-year-old All-Star team. Little League Softball seeks families to host players every year during the series to help defray costs and give the players a more comfortable environment in which to stay. Families are assigned players at random by Little League Softball. Priscilla Aponte, Darien Bardoner, Brooke and Molly Hendricks, Jennifer Rahn and Tessa Trujillo are the road Warriors who snore away the nights and play away the days with the Kawasakis. Mackenzie Staples also spent a couple of nights with the family when the team arrived in Portland last Monday. "We just have one child," said David, who was decked out in his dark green Central T-shirt Monday at Alpenrose Stadium after Sterling's 5-0 victory against Grand Terrace, Calif., pushed the team into today's semifinals. "This is our chance to expand the family, temporarily." "One of the girls asked me, 'Are you guys going to do this again next year?'" Regina said. "We were like, 'Yeah.' And she said, 'Even after us?'" Those little things are what make the couple, which has been married for 20 years, keep coming back for more. This is the fifth year the family has hosted players during the series. "We get strange Christmas cards, like from Aruba," Regina said with a laugh. "We exchange a lot of Christmas cards with players and families we've had." This group, from some 1,700-plus miles away, has stayed busy playing video games, going to the movies, the beach and the zoo, sleeping in the same room - they insisted - and generally taking over the family's new house, which it just moved into a couple of months ago. "They really makes us feel at home," Jennifer Rahn said. "They take us in like we were their own kids." "It's fun," Priscilla Aponte said. "They are friendly and fun to hang out with. Dave and Regina are hilarious." Regina makes goodie bags for the girls, lets them hang out in the family's hot tub and does their laundry. David set the girls up at the fire pit, so they could cook s'mores. The six girls even went through a box of Lucky Charms and a gallon of milk one morning at the kitchen table. "I've been running to the store for milk a lot," Regina said with a grin. Two years ago, the family hosted seven girls from Latin America and found their own dwelling too small. So they traded homes with David's mother. "That's why we got a bigger house," Regina joked. Prime-time players Monday score: Sterling 5, Grand Terrace, Calif. 0 Up next: Semifinals - Sterling vs. Robbinsville, N.J. When and Where: 6 p.m. today, on ESPN2 and WSDR-AM (1240). In sports: Sterling All-Stars become prime-time players, advance to World Series semifinals, game on ESPN2. Special four-page Little League Softball World Series wrap around the sports section.