Two of this week’s honorees are senior Jessica Phelps from Del Norte of San Diego for SoCal Softball & senior Adam Morris from Rancho San Juan of Salinas for NorCal Baseball. Photos: Twitter.com & Courtesy school.
For our second week of honoring baseball and softball players we alsomost fulfill two of the purposes of this feature, which is to find hidden talent that might only get local recognition, and to track potential entries for the Cal-Hi Sports online state records. One of our honorees will make the record book and another was close but didn’t quite make it. This week’s stops are in Salinas and Pleasanton in Northern California and Santa Monica and San Diego in Southern California.
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Notes: For these honors, we also consider CIF Central Section players for Northern California. To nominate anyone, email markjtennis@gmail.com.
Cal-Hi Sports Northern California
Baseball Player of the Week
Adam Morris (Rancho San Juan, Salinas) Sr.
The birthplace of Nobel Prize winning novelist John Steinbeck is our destination in the search for the Northern California Baseball Player of the Week, and it’s at Rancho San
Juan where we find the honoree, a fairly new school that had its first varsity baseball team in the 2019-20 season.
We often get nominations from parents and from coaches, and while most of them are stretches and can conceivably qualify for the State Stat Stars feature, the nomination
for Morris not only came from his father, David Morris, but his coach as well.
The twist is not only are the two the same person, but this nomination is no stretch as this senior left-handed pitcher and slugger is the award winner that has an opportunity to make the Cal-Hi Sports Online record book.
This early in the season is when teams in Northern California have played a lot less than teams in Southern California, so when we consider who to honor we will look at the player’s body of work from the start of the season.
For just what Morris did last week he could be our honoree but if we go back three weeks to his first three starts on the mound, makes him a grand slam dunk as this week’s winner.
Last week in his one start on the mound Adam tossed a no-hitter with 14 strikeouts and five walks in an 8-0 blanking of crosstown North Salinas. He also walked and scored the only run he needed.
In his first start of the season, Morris threw a no-no with 10 strikeouts and four walks in a 5-inning 10-0 shutout of San Jose Andrew Hill. In that game he also was 2-for-3 with a double and two runs scored.
Sandwiched in between to the two no-hitters was a one-hitter with nine strikeouts and four walks in a 5-inning 11-0 blanking of Seaside two weeks ago. He had two RBI and a run scored in that game. We assume he didn’t pitch in a Tuesday game already played this week in which the Trailblazers lost, 11-0, to Greenfield.
When he’s not pitching, the roster says he plays first base and outfield, or maybe he’s
a designated hitter, and last week he was in one of those spots in a 12-3 win at North Salinas in the home and away series where Adam went 3-for-4 with a double, two RBI and two runs scored.
As for the possibilities of Morris making the Cal-Hi Sports Online Record Book, the
one-hitter prevented him from having three-straight no-hitters, a mark that qualified
for the Most Consecutive No-Hitters list. But he still has a shot because two consecutive no-no’s makes the list and Morris will get that opportunity in his next start. He also has another opportunity to make the record book but his current 17 consecutive scoreless innings is a ways off the 41 it takes to make the Most Consecutive Scoreless Innings list.
Marissa Anderson from Foothill of Pleasanton will play next at Chico State. Photo: SportsRecruits.com.
Cal-Hi Sports Northern California
Softball Player of the Week
Marissa Anderson (Foothill, Pleasanton) Sr.
The Tri-Valley area in the East Bay portion of the CIF North Coast Section is where we find this week’s Northern California Softball Player of the Week, and it’s at a school steeped in softball tradition as perennially one of the top programs in Northern California, and the school where we find our award winner is Foothill.
Marissa has a been a star as the Falcons’ backstop as a four-year varsity player, including as a freshman when she hit three triples in one game to get her name into the state record book. It’s what she’s done to help Foothill get off to a 5-1 start this season, however, that earns her this statewide honor.
Last week, the Chico State-bound senior catcher started off by going 3-for-3 with a double, two RBI and a run scored in a 7-2 victory over Castro Valley. In the second game of the week against a host Freedom of Oakley with an equally impressive softball history, Anderson had a hit and two RBI in a 9-5 loss. In the third game last week, a 5-inning 13-0 shellacking of Fremont American, Marissa had a blistering bat after going 2-for-2 with a triple, three RBI and two runs scored.
So far this season at the beginning of this week, Anderson was hitting a whopping .800 on 12-for-15 with a home run, triple, three doubles, 16 RBI and five runs scored. Behind the plate she had a perfect 1.000 fielding percentage. This week also has begun very well for Marissa. In a 10-0 win on Tuesday over previously 3-0 Livermore, she went 2-for-2 with a double, homer and five RBI.
For her three-year varsity career at this point, Anderson has an overall average of .494 in 50 games with 13 home runs, 20 doubles, 64 RBI and 39 runs scored.
Cal-Hi Sports Southern California
Softball Player of the Week
Jessica Phelps (Del Norte, San Diego) Sr.
To find the Southern California winner this week, we head south to a city that is often
called “America’s Finest City,” and we end up in the northern part of San Diego a
couple of miles west of the I-15 at Del Norte.
Last fall, Phelps was involved in some controversy that involved her and her mother,
Poway Unified School District Superintendent Marian Kim Phelps. An investigation is currently being conducted and Ms. Phelps is on leave while this is going on. The Del Norte team also is under the direction this season by interim head coach Amanda Waters-Nelson, the school’s athletic director and the former athletic director at Mater Dei of Santa Ana.
This isn’t about any of that, however. It’s also not anything that disqualifies Jessica from being honored or saluted for what she’s done or may do on the field this season. We try to stay away from off the field controversy for the most part and stick to honoring the achievements of student-athletes, and the Princeton-committed Phelps is more than deserving for her work both in the circle and the batter’s box so far this season.
Del Norte is 6-0 to start the season entering a big game on Wednesday vs Cathedral Catholic and Phelps is 4-0 with a 0.44 ERA and 17 strikeouts with only one walk and no extra base hits in 16 innings pitched. Last week, she tossed a three-hitter with seven strikeouts in a 7-1 victory against Carlsbad, and went three innings with two strikeouts, no walk and no earned runs in a 4-3 victory over Mater Dei Catholic of Chula Vista.
Jessica didn’t pitch in an 11-1 victory over Imperial in the title game of the Cougar Classic but her bat was super hot. Facing a team that had upset defending CIF San Diego Section Open Division champion Poway in its previous game, Jessica went 4-for-4 with her first home run of the season, a double, three RBI and four runs scored. In the first two games last week when she pitched and batted, Phelps also was a combined 4-for-5 with two doubles, and two runs batted in.
So far this season with bat in hand, Phelps is hitting for a .556 average with the one
homer, five doubles, six RBI and six runs scored in 18 at-bats.
Jackson Klein of Santa Monica struck out 25 batters in his two back-to-back no-hitters earlier this season. Photo: Santa Monica Daily Press.
Baseball Player of the Week
Jackson Klein (Santa Monica) Sr.
The search for the Southern California Baseball Player of the Week takes us less than a mile east of the Pacific Ocean to Santa Monica, and where Highway 1, better known as Lincoln Boulevard in Santa Monica, intersects with I-10 right near where Klein is a student-athlete at Santa Monica High.
In the one start on the mound last week for the Vikings, the senior right-hander didn’t throw his third straight no-hitter, but he did toss his third consecutive shutout in a 2-0 victory over Peninsula of Rolling Hills Estates on a three-hitter with 11 strikeouts and two walks.
As is the case at this early stage of the baseball and softball seasons, we take a player’s complete body of work into account, and it’s pretty safe to say that if we weren’t doing our final basketball players of the week two weeks ago that Klein would have been a winner.
Three starts ago, Klein pitched a no-hitter with 12 strikeouts and two walks in a 4-0 blanking of Los Angeles Hamilton. In his next start, Jackson was in full force action with a perfect game that included 13 strikeouts in a 5-0 victory against Grace Brethren of Simi Valley.
With the back-to-back no-no’s, Klein will get a spot in the Cal-Hi Sports Online Record Book Most Consecutive No-Hitters list where the threshold to get on is two-straight no-hitters. He’ll have a chance to move up on the list if he can get a third consecutive no-hitter in his next start, and we’ll be watching.
So far this season Klein has been more than fine on the mound with a 5-0 record, a 0.00 ERA, a mere 11 hits and 49 strikeouts with only nine walks in 30 innings pitched. The Vikings were going to play next on Wednesday of this week vs Redondo (Redondo Beach).
Harold Abend is the associate editor of CalHiSports.com and the vice president of the California Prep Sportswriters Association. He can be reached at marketingharoldabend@gmail.com. Don’t forget to follow him on Twitter: @HaroldAbend
