Two of this week’s four honorees are freshman Jackie Morales (left) from Notre Dame of Sherman Oaks and junior Morgan Winfield from Sequoia of Redwood City. Photos: ndknightssb / Instagram.com & Sequoia HS Athletics / MaxPreps.com.
It gets tricky in these last weeks of the school year as we avoid choosing anyone who might be playing his/her final game on the day they are honored. We still can find very strong candidates with that restriction and this week have found them in San Diego and Sherman Oaks for Southern California plus Redwood City and Alameda in Northern 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
Jackie Morales (Notre Dame, Sherman Oaks) Fr.
We head to the southern part of the San Fernando Valley just a few blocks north of the 101 freeway to find our SoCal softball honoree this week and it’s at a school that has had its share of great athletes in multiple sports, most recently in boys hoops with State Junior of the Year Jaylen Stokes and last season in softball with all-state first team slugger Ella Parker (now at Oklahoma).
This year’s team at Notre Dame was strengthened with an influx of six freshmen. The future has arrived early and the leading power hitter of the group has been Morales. She helped the Knights send shockwaves throughout the SoCal softball community last week by blasting three homers and collecting four RBI in a 9-7 upset win in the first round of the CIF Southern Section D1 playoffs over Lutheran of Orange. OLu had been regarded as one of the favorites to win the title in that division this season and was No. 5 in the state entering the day. Instead, its season came to a quick end.
Morales wasn’t done hitting home runs last week after the Notre Dame game, either. She added another one for the Knights when they outlasted El Segundo, 12-10, in the second round of the CIFSS D1 playoffs. The team, which moved up to No. 16 in this week’s state rankings, is set to play No. 11 El Modena in the quarterfinals on Wednesday.
For the season for the 25-5 Knights, Morales has hit a team-leading eight homers and has driven in a team-leading 44 RBI. She also has a .462 average and 11 doubles.
Can Van Playman play? He’s more of a pitcher than a hitter but the easy answer for the Mission Bay of San Diego standout is yes. Photo: Mission Bay HS Athletics / MaxPreps.com.
Cal-Hi Sports Southern California
Baseball Player of the Week
Van Playman (Mission Bay, San Diego) Sr.
For this week’s SoCal baseball honoree, we visit a school that is in one of the most beautiful locations anywhere. Mission Bay does sit very close to the actual Mission Bay of San Diego and is not far from Mission Beach and other major attractions in the city.
Playman has been an attraction for this year’s Buccaneers’ baseball team. The stats that stand out for him the most entering the CIF San Diego Section D3 playoffs are for Playman’s pitching: 9-0 record, 0.70 ERA and 87 strikeouts in 60 innings.
Mission Bay closed its regular season last week with two league games against Morse of San Diego and Van was the man in both. First, in a 9-4 win, he went 2-for-4 at the plate with a double and triple. Then later, in a 15-0 triumph, Playman pitched a two-hitter with nine strikeouts and had one hit with two runs scored and one RBI. Mission Bay also improved its season record to 22-6. In Playman’s previous pitching performance the week before, he had 10 Ks in four innings of work.
In addition to those season pitching totals, Van has a .366 batting average with 22 runs scored and 21 RBI.
Mission Bay’s first playoff game will be Wednesday as the No. 4 seed in the SD Section D3 playoffs against either Escondido or Fallbrook.
Cal-Hi Sports Northern California
State Baseball Player of the Week
Morgan Winfield (Sequoia, Redwood City) Jr.
The San Francisco Peninsula is the home of our NorCal baseball honoree for this week. Redwood City, the county seat of San Mateo County, also is home of major tech companies like Oracle and EA Sports.
Winfield wasn’t officially nominated by our friend Ethan Kassel of Bay Area Prep Insider but we saw the interview that Ethan did with Morgan after Sequoia posted an 8-0 shutout last week over Carlmont of Belmont. In that game, Winfield did it all by pitching a three-hit shutout and he hammered a pair of homers with four RBI.
Just a junior, Morgan is in his third year on the Sequoia varsity team. For this season, he is batting .377 with six homers and 29 RBI. Winfield also had six homers with a .333 average last season as a sophomore. He had four homers as a freshman so that is 16 for his career.
Pitching wasn’t the main strength of Winfield’s career as a freshman or sophomore, but this season he’s picked it up and has a 6-1 record with a 2.19 ERA and he has 63 strikeouts in 59 innings.
Sequoia is taking a 15-12 record into Saturday’s CIF Central Coast Section D3 playoff game vs 19-8 Los Altos.
Cassandra Sanchez has been hitting and pitching her way to a big season at St. Joseph Notre Dame of Alameda. Photo: ncsa.org.
Cal-Hi Sports Northern California
State Softball Player of the Week
Cassandra Sanchez
(St. Joseph Notre Dame, Alameda) Jr.
For our final stop this week, we head to the island of Alameda across the bay from San Francisco and to a small Catholic school that is most well-known for being a big-time basketball school in the 1990s that was once led by Hall of Famer Jason Kidd.
Sanchez has been another of those players who can get it done on both sides of a softball diamond, whether inside the pitching circle or inside the batter’s box. In a 11-3 victory last week vs Head-Royce of Oakland, Cassandra went 3-for-3 with a double and three RBI and she pitched a two-hitter with 10 strikeouts. Also last week, in a 13-3 victory vs California School for the Deaf, Sanchez shined by going 2-for-3 with a double, four runs scored and two RBI.
For the season, and heading into a CIF North Coast Section D3 playoff game on Wednesday for the 20-5 Pilots vs Acalanes of Lafayette, Cassandra has a .438 season batting average with 35 RBI and 39 runs scored. For pitching, she has a 1.75 ERA, a 19-2 record and 226 strikeouts in 135 2/3 innings.
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.
