Norco players show off their CIF Southern Section D1 championship patches after their final win of the season against El Modena. Photo: @NorcoHS_Sports / X.com.
For the third time since 2012, the Norco High softball team has been officially added to the all-time list of State Teams of the Year that extends back to 1974. The Cougars didn’t play in the CIF regional championships, but already had put together a strong enough resume to finish No. 1 after winning the CIF Southern Section D1 title. Del Oro of Loomis ended up with a solid challenge for the top after winning the CIF NorCal D1 crown.
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Final No. 1 rankings and races for the State Team of the Year selection in sports that have yet to have CIF state championships (like softball and baseball) can often come down to the timing of when a team loses a game.
That ended up being the difference for the 2025 State Team of the Year nod in California as the CIF Southern Section D1 champions from Norco have finished on top with the CIF Northern California D1 champions from Del Oro of Loomis considered runner-up.
Norco (29-3) won its section title, the toughest playoff bracket to win in the nation since most states don’t have competitive equity seeding and the top teams within each state don’t actually play each other that often, back on May 31 with a 3-0 triumph over El Modena of Orange. That win also avenged an earlier loss and made it possible for the Cougars to claim wins against all three of the teams they had losses to during the season. They had lost to El Modena in the final game of the prestigious Dave Kops Tournament of Champions in Arizona. Another was to Orange Lutheran at the Michelle Carew Classic (a team Norco beat earlier in the season) while the other was to league rival Roosevelt of Eastvale (which Norco beat earlier and it was a loss in a game after the Cougars had wrapped up everything they needed to do before the playoffs).
Coral Williams ended her sophomore season for Norco with a 16-0 record and she pitched a one-hitter in the CIFSS D1 championship game. Photo: Harold Abend.
If Del Oro had been able to complete a 32-1 season by winning the NorCal D1 title and counted a 3-1 record against its league rivals from Oak Ridge (El Dorado Hills) it’s safe to say that the Golden Eagles would be No. 1 and Norco No. 2 in the final rankings. They didn’t win in the CIF Sac-Joaquin Section D1 championship, however, falling to Oak Ridge and therefore having a 2-2 record in games against the Trojans. Those two played in the NorCal final last Saturday with Del Oro (31-2) posting a 5-3 win.
Norco had to move up to No. 1 after the section playoffs were done around the state and also was pretty much cemented into finishing No. 1 since any ranking that makes any sense isn’t going to drop a team from a No. 1 ranking at the end. The Cougars opted out of the CIF SoCal D1 playoffs (as most top teams in the CIFSS do) and have never been in the regionals. Assuming a CIF state championship is added to the calendar in two years and that the regional playoffs will be played at least one week and possibly two weeks earlier, the top CIFSS teams are going to want to be in it.
Head coach Rick Robinson has built a program at Norco that is annually near the top of the Southern California and CIF state pecking order. This is the third State Team of the Year selection for the Cougars with the others coming in 2012 and 2019. This also marked the seventh CIFSS title for the team since Robinson became head coach in 2000. He had another section title at his previous school, Centennial of Corona, and his eight titles is the most in the CIFSS.
Most of Norco’s top teams have obvious, standout player of the year candidates leading the way. In 2012, it was pitcher Emily Lockman, who won all 31 games in the circle and was Ms. Softball State Player of the Year. In 2019, senior catcher Kinzie Hansen (later an All-American at Oklahoma) was Ms. Softball but junior pitcher Sarah Willis was in the mix as well.
This year’s team isn’t quite like that. There were two pitchers that could be dominant, although in the playoffs it was mostly sophomore Coral Williams, who pitched a one-hitter with nine strikeouts in the title game. She ended 17-0. Junior Peyton May went 12-2. In the title game, the bottom of the order produced the three runs needed for the win with Dillyn Eckenrod contributing two doubles. Earlier in the playoffs, No. 9 hitter Sasha Pham had seven RBI. That balance also is shown by senior Tamryn Shorter with a team-high nine homers, sophomore Leighton Gray right behind with eight homers and a higher batting average (.455 entering the final) and senior Ashley Duran with a team-high 34 RBI.
“We’ve told them all year that what made this team good was the fact it didn’t have to be one part of the order or we didn’t have to rely on two or three hitters,” Robinson told Harold Abend of Cal-Hi Sports after the final game. “It was a team effort for the whole thing this season.”
It’s also been a team effort in the coaching staff for Robinson in the ascent of his program. He’ll have 728 career wins to start next season (ninth in the Cal-Hi Sports all-time state records) and has been State Coach of the Year before, which means he isn’t eligible to be selected again after this season. His sister, Beth Windham, has been the team’s pitching coach for 20 years and the team’s associate coach, Dave Angene, has been there since that first season in 2000. Angene’s index cards that has scouting reports that are given to each player before each game are almost legendary in the Inland Empire.
“When you have that kind of stability with your staff, things run much smoother,” Robinson said in an interview with Eric-Paul Johnson of the Riverside Press-Enterprise. “Do we always agree? No. But we can have the honest debates together and not have things blow up.
“We try to promote making this feel like a family, and it all starts at the top. When everyone is working together and playing for each other and not for themselves, you see the results on the field.”
Norco’s No. 1 finish also completes an amazing feat for the Corona-Norco Unified School Distict. California’s No. 1 public school teams for the 2024-25 school year in football (Centennial), boys basketball (Roosevelt of Eastvale), baseball (Corona) and softball (Norco) are all from schools in that same district.
We also would be remiss in not mentioning that Norco’s CIFSS title game win over El Modena came almost on the one-year anniversary to the day of the death of one of the most memorable players we’ve ever encountered in the 45 years of covering the state. That would be Class of 2017 Norco grad Taylor Dockins, the 2017 Ms. Softball Player of the Year. She was diagnosed with liver cancer prior to that season and the Cougars were looking to complete a 34-0 season in the CIFSS title game when they were stunned at the finish by Los Alamitos. It was impossible not to root for her to cap off that season with a title, but she answered all the questions from the media with strength and respect for the other team. Taylor died of cancer on June 2, 2024 at age 25.
ALL-TIME CAL-HI SPORTS
SOFTBALL STATE TEAMS OF THE YEAR
(Selected by Cal-Hi Sports)
Ms. Softball State Player of rthe Year Kinzie Hansen was the top player on Norco’s last No. 1 team in 2019 . Photo: @NorcoHSSoftball / Twitter.com.
2025 – Norco (29-3)
2024 – Garden Grove Pacifica (27-2)
2023 – Hollister (30-3)
2022 – Mountain View St. Francis (31-2)
2021 – Anaheim Esperanza (22-2)*
2020 – No Selection
2019 – Norco (31-1)
2018 – San Marcos (28-2)
2017 – Los Alamitos (27-3)
2016 – Mission Viejo (27-4)
2015 – Yucaipa (31-3)
2014 – Mission Viejo (26-1)
2013 – Corona Santiago (31-5)
2012 – Norco (31-2)
2011 – Corona Santiago (28-5)
2010 – Chino Hills Ayala (29-5)
2009 – San Jose Archbishop Mitty (32-0)
2008 – Sacramento Sheldon (32-2)
2007 – Valencia (32-1)
2006 – Oakley Freedom (25-0)
2005 – Simi Valley Royal (29-2)
2004 – Garden Grove Pacifica (31-2)
2003 – Garden Grove Pacifica (31-2)
2002 – San Diego Mira Mesa (31-1)
2001 – Fresno Bullard (36-1)
2000 – Tustin Foothill (33-2)
1999 – Fresno Bullard (38-1-1)
1998 – Clovis Buchanan (35-2)
1997 – Garden Grove Pacifica (31-1-1)
1996 – Santa Ana Mater Dei (30-1)
1995 – Huntington Beach Marina (24-5)
1994 – Clovis (31-3) (plus 2 wins by default)
1993 – Covina Charter Oak (29-0-1)
1992 – Stockton Lincoln (35-3)
1991 – Stockton Lincoln (29-3)
1990 – Roseville (37-2)
1989 – Lakewood St. Joseph (26-1)
1988 – Santa Fe Springs St. Paul (21-6)
1987 – Stockton Lincoln (30-0)
1986 – Woodland Hills El Camino Real (19-0)
1985 – Huntington Beach Ocean View (32-0)
1984 – Stockton Lincoln (37-1)
1983 – Lodi (27-2)
1982 – San Diego Madison (20-0)
1981 – Santa Maria Righetti (25-1)
1980 – Santa Maria Righetti (29-0)
1979 – Santa Rosa Montgomery (26-1)
1978 – Fairfield Armijo (23-0)
1977 – Huntington Beach Marina (17-0)
1976 – Chula Vista Hilltop (17-0)
1975 – Downey Warren (18-1)
1974 – El Segundo (undefeated)
*Forfeit loss not included.
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
