Two of this week’s honorees are Abi Milton from Muir of Pasadena (left) and Kaleb Wing of Scotts Valley. Photos: Muir HS / MaxPreps.com & Raul Ebio / Press Banner.
These are the first players of the week for the 2025 spring season and all four honorees have been tabbed for providing big power totals at the plate. One of them is from a family we’ve been covering closely since the early 1990s and another was impacted greatly from the Eaton Fire in Altadena. They hail from Westlake Village and Pasadena for Southern California and from Scotts Valley and San Jose for 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 Southern California
Softball Player of the Week
Abi Milton (Muir, Pasadena) Sr.
For our first stop of the season for softball in Southern California we go to a region of the state near where the highly destructive Eaton fire burned in January and a school that really turned it around in softball last season.
It’s at Muir where we find Milton, who along with junior teammate Gianna “Gigi” Butler led the Mustangs to their first CIF Southern Section playoff berth in four decades.
Unfortunately in looking up info about Abi, it was discovered that Muir head coach Robert Milton and Abi’s father lost their home in Altadena to the flames. Abi’s grandparents lived on the same street and lost their home as well.
Milton and the Mustangs posted a big 15-2 win last week vs Oxford Academy of Cypress, which was 9-1 entering the matchup. Muir improved to 5-1 and Milton went 3-for-5 with a homer and four RBI. Abi stayed hot in her next outing, going 3-for-4 with a homer, triple and two RBI in a 9-1 victory against Eagle Rock.
In her first game of the spring, Milton had a 4-for-4 performance with two triples, three runs scored and three RBI to lead the Mustangs past Sacred Heart of Jesus (Los Angeles). In Muir’s first seven games (six wins), Abi was batting .667 with four homers, three triples and 14 RBI.
Last season as a junior, the Azusa Pacific recruit batted .568 in 32 games with 55 runs, 51 RBI and 14 homers. Milton’s name was recently added to the Cal-Hi Sports all-time state lists for runs and homers in a season.
We hope those in Altadena and in the Muir community are continuing to recover from the fires.
Oaks Christian’s Quentin Young is shown playing for USA U18 national team last summer. Photo: OaksChristian.org.
Cal-Hi Sports Southern California
Baseball Player of the Week
Quentin Young
(Oaks Christian, Westlake Village) Sr.
Our first stop this week is near the Ventura County/L.A. County border at a school that has had its share of baseball/softball sluggers in the last few years (especially softball).
Quentin is a baseball player who has been rising steadily on all of the various MLB/college recruiting lists and was on the USA U-18 national team last summer. He’s committed to LSU. He really made a name for himself at the home run derby for high school players before the MLB All-Star Game at Arlington, Texas, with 13 homers in two rounds. In one mock draft released just this week, Young was listed at No. 22 overall for the first round and going to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
It’s going to likely be very tough to supplant 2024 Mr. Baseball State Player of the Year Ethan Hernandez of Corona as the 2025 State Player of the Year since he was a junior, but Young is out to the type of start that if he keeps it up will put him in the conversation.
Oaks Christian faced perennial power Harvard-Westlake of Studio City last week and it was Young who came through with a three-run homer in the bottom of the seventh to lift the Lions to a 5-3 walk-off win. It was Quentin’s fifth homer of the season already this spring, but he wasn’t done for the week, either. The next day, Young went 3-for-4 with another homer and two RBI in a 8-3 win over Saugus.
In the previous week before last, Young blasted a pair of homers and had six RBI as part of a 3-for-4 outing that led Oaks Christian past Moorpark, 9-2. The shortstop began this week batting .450 with six homers and 14 RBI in six games.
If Quentin were able to get to be Mr. Baseball, he’d join his uncles Delmon and Dmitri on the all-time state lists. Delmon was the winner back in the 2002 season from Camarillo. Dmitri was the State Player of the Year in 1991. We also always remember the day we did a cover shoot for Student Sports Magazine earlier in 1991 with Dmitri along with a freshman girls track and field phenom who was at Rio Mesa at the same time — future track star Marion Jones.
Cal-Hi Sports Northern California
Baseball Player of the Week
Kaleb Wing (Scotts Valley) Sr.
Anyone who has driven from the Bay Area to Santa Cruz on Highway 17 knows where Scotts Valley is located. The school in the town in the Santa Cruz Mountains also is where we stop to find our first NorCal player of the week this season in baseball.
Wing certainly wasn’t clipped in last Saturday’s 21-1 rout of Watsonville High. The senior shortstop/pitcher who has signed with Loyola Marymount connected for a pair of homers and drove in a whopping eight runs. Wing also ended 4-for-5 with three runs scored and he had a triple. In another game to get the week started, Kaleb went 2-for-3 with an RBI and a run scored in a 9-8 loss to St. Francis CCC of Watsonville.
As a junior, Wing didn’t have those kinds of power numbers but he did bat .324 in 24 games and helped the Falcons to a second-place finish in the Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League.
Despite not doing much pitching in high school, Wing also is a pitching prospect who appeared last summer in the prestigious Area Code Games at Blair Field in Long Beach.
Julia Simon from Presentation of San Jose has begun her junior season with several impressive outings at the plate. Photo: X.com.
Cal-Hi Sports Northern California
Softball Player of the Week
Julia Simon (Presentation, San Jose) Jr.
Our final stop this week comes at the all-girls Catholic school in San Jose that has been the partner school for many, many years to the all-boys school at Bellarmine Prep. It’s there where we find a junior catcher/utility player who has been one of the top players in the West Catholic Athletic League.
Simon, who has committed to UC Riverside, led the Panthers to a 20-1 victory last week over Independence of San Jose. She finished 4-for-4 with one homer, two triples and five RBI. In her first game this season, Simon went 2-for-2 with three runs scored, one double and two RBI in a 16-13 victory vs Capuchino of San Bruno.
Last season as a sophomore, Julia jumped all over the ball for a .472 batting average, including eight doubles and 20 RBI. She also has made a name for herself playing for the Universal Tatro 18-Under Gold travel ball squad. And in addition to being All-WCAL as a freshman and sophomore, Simon was on last year’s All-Bay Area second team and was All-West as an infielder by the Extra Inning Softball website.
Mark Tennis is the co-founder and publisher of CalHiSports.com. He can be reached at markjtennis@gmail.com. Don’t forget to follow Mark on the Cal-Hi Sports Twitter handle: @CalHiSports
