Menlo School of Atherton capped a championship season last Saturday with a win over Santa Clara in the CIF NorCal D4 final. Photo: 49ers Cal-Hi Sports / YouTube.com.
State Team of the Year honors for the 2025 baseball season also are going out for the four other CIF based playoff divisions. We have done teams of the year in five divisions for. many years and these mythical honors considered all teams that played in CIF section playoffs (including those that opted out of the regionals). Two CIF Southern Section opt outs have been selected as State Teams of the Year for D2 and D3. Also gaining honors are Menlo School for D4 and Etna for D5.
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Congratulations to these five baseball teams for being added to the list of all-time state teams of the year according to our traditional Cal-Hi Sports five-division format:
Division I
St. John Bosco (Bellflower)
There were no complications about the Braves this season as they added a CIF SoCal D1 title to the CIF Southern Section D1 title they won one week earlier. Bosco won the SoCal D3 crown a year ago that helped set the stage for this year, but that team didn’t win a CIFSS divisional title and was considered D2 for our final state rankings where the D2 team of the year was 28-2 Cardinal Newman of Santa Rosa.
West Ranch pitcher Hunter Manning was outstanding in all of his CIFSS playoff appearances. Photo: Habeba Mostafa/ The Signal.
Division II
West Ranch (Valencia)
Going into the final week of the season, we knew it would be tough for Yuba City to perhaps not finish at No. 1 if it were to win the CIF NorCal D2 title and cap off a 31-5 season. That is what the Honkers established, but we had already placed the CIF Southern Section D2 champions from West Ranch in the No. 1 spot and knew that the team had opted out of the SoCal regionals.
Since we don’t ever drop a No. 1 team at the end, West Ranch is indeed the D2 State Team of the Year and Yuba City is runner-up.
Although the CIFSS D2 playoffs aren’t close to D1 in terms of the elite-level competition, D2 included two Trinity League teams (Mater Dei of Santa Ana and Servite of Anaheim) along with an Oaks Christian team led by possible first round MLB draft pick Quentin Young. West Ranch (23-9) won the title with a 2-0 victory over Mater Dei. The Wildcats also had notable wins during the season vs Harvard-Westlake of Studio City plus others that put them inside the top 25 of the state entering the final week of the week.
West Ranch senior Hunter Manning pitched a four-hitter with six strikeouts against Mater Dei and earlier in the playoffs he had a no-hitter vs Sultana of Hesperia. Manning (UC Irvine) also had a .441 batting average. The Wildcats also featured Mikey Murr with six homers, Ty Diaz with 41 hits and 31 RBI and Landon Hu with 41 hits and 32 runs.
The last team from the Santa Clarita Valley to end No. 1 in the state was Castaic as a new school in a lower division in 2023. The Coyotes were tops in D4 that season. Hart of Newhall won the CIFSS D2 title last year and ended 26-5, but we had Cardinal Newman of Santa Rosa (28-2) ranked one spot higher.
This year also marked a changing of the guard for the West Ranch program, which for the last 15 years has had coaches Ryan Lindgreen, Casey Burrill and Brady Burrill. Casey was the head coach from 2007 to 2023, then Ryan was head coach the last two years. The three will all be stepping down after this season to spend more time with their families.
Division III
Ganesha (Pomona)
Similar to West Ranch in D2, the Giants opted out of the SoCal regional playoffs after they won a CIF Southern Section title. In their case, it was an 8-2 triumph over Dos Pueblos of Goleta in the CIFSS D4 final. They also wrapped up a 23-3 season in which two of their losses were to teams from higher divisions (Arcadia and San Dimas).
Both Roseville (NorCal D3 champ) and University City of San Diego (SoCal D3 champ) had double-digit loss totals that proved to be too much to get a state team of the year nod. They will end No. 2 and No. 4 in the final divisional state rankings.
It wasn’t that long ago (2000s and into 2010s) when Ganesha baseball was a laughingstock that endured seasons such as 0-18 in 2013 and 3-15-1 in 2019. The Giants almost went unbeaten two years ago in 2023, but fell to Castaic, 7-6, in the CIF SoCal D5 regional final. They were 20-0 at the time of that loss.
This year’s team was in a higher playoff division in the CIFSS in D4 but went all the way and showed that all of the blowout wins it had in the Miramonte League just showed how strong the team could play. In Ganesha’s previous CIFSS D4 playoff wins, the scores were 2-0 vs Burroughs of Burbank, 4-1 vs La Canada, 1-0 vs Saugus and 11-1 vs South (Torrance).
USC-bound catcher Isaiah Ibarra had a two-run homer in the final he went 3-for-3 with two doubles and two RBI vs South. UC Santa Barbara-bound pitcher Gavin Moran tossed a four-hitter with eight strikeouts in the final and in the quarterfinal he had a one-hitter with seven strikeouts.
For the season, in their 26 games, the Giants only gave up 26 runs and scored a whopping 308 runs for a margin of 282 runs.
This is Ganesha High’s first-ever state team of the year honor in baseball.
Division IV
Menlo School (Atherton)
It’s just not possible in this era of competitive equity playoff pairings to do divisional state rankings during the season since it is impossible to know which divisions teams are going to be in for the regional playoffs. In the one run-through we did last week for D4, the top three for D4 were from the NorCal bracket with impressive records of 27-6, 28-3 and 23-4. Menlo School was the other semifinalist in that group and on Saturday it was the Knights who took the title. They are now the D4 State Team of the Year in a selection over SoCal D4 champion Ridgeview of Bakersfield.
Menlo (24-8) went to top seed and previous D4 No. 1 Woodland Christian and won in the semifinals, 15-11. The Knights gave up three runs in the bottom of the seventh but didn’t let the Cardinals walk it off as the teams went to extra innings in a 11-11 tie. Menlo then scored four times in the top of the eighth and held off Woodland Christian in the bottom of the eighth. That also was the same team the Knights lost to in the CIF NorCal D5 title game in 2024.
In the title game, Santa Clara (which was 29-3) had two runners on in the bottom of the seventh and was down 2-1, but Ben Salama (the closer and who had the first RBI of the game on a sacrifice fly) got a grounder that was a force out at second to end the game. Santa Clara had won in the other semifinal in the NorCal bracket against West Valley of Cottonwood (which was 23-4 entering the game).
Junior shortstop Jack Freehill led the Knights for the season with 35 hits and a .354 batting average. Jackson Flanagan, who pitched six shutout innings in the first-round win earlier in the week vs Las Lomas, had four more in the final. He ended 11-3 on the season with a 1.69 ERA.
Division V
Etna
Thanks to Pioneer of Whittier posting a 3-2 win in the CIF SoCal regional final over Corcoran and its 28-4 record, the Lions from the small town, small school up near the Oregon border in Siskiyou County is going to add the mythical D5 state title to the CIF NorCal regional title it won last Saturday at its home field.
The Lions (21-7) were the top seed in the north bracket and won in the final over second-seed Stevenson of Pebble Beach, 6-5, which had to travel 440 miles for the game two days after its win in the semifinals vs Lincoln of San Francisco.
On a team with major stat stars such as Clayton Harris, Emmett Stacher and Noah Hubbard, Etna won in the title game despite only getting four hits. Stacher pitched five innings to pick up the win, which was sparked by a five-run rally in the very first inning highlighted by a home run from Harris.
The last D5 State Team of the Year from the CIF Northern Section was Colusa in 2021. Winters also has been a CIF Northern Section school that has been No. 1 in D5 and more than once. Trinity of Weaverville, which is not that far south of Etna, was the 1989 D5 Team of the Year in baseball. This is the first time ever for Etna.
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
