Two of our honorees this week are Mia Camacho from Whittier Christian of La Habra and Jensen Hirschkorn of Kingsburg. Photos: ABC 30 Fresno & Whittier Christian Athletics / MaxPreps.com.
Both of our baseball honorees had no-hitters last week, but one of them included a lot of hitting at the plate. Both of our softball honorees, on the other hand, were selected based mainly for hitting home runs. One has a streak of homers in six straight games while the other has six in the last few games. The group hails from Studio City and La Habra for Southern California plus Kingsburg and San Jose for Northern California.
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Notes: For these honors, we 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
Mia Camacho (Whittier Christian, La Habra) Jr.
We start at one of those schools technically in Orange County but also is considered part of the San Gabriel Valley with the rest of Whittier/La Habra. Mia still has her senior season to go, but already was called a school softball legend earlier this season. The Rutgers-bound slugger has been living up to such a label in the past few weeks.
Camacho also is a player that may not want to be on spring break this week with the way she’s been hitting home runs. She hit home runs in both of her team’s games last week and will come off of spring break next week with at least one home run in six straight games.
In a 9-0 win to start last week for the Heralds against Bishop Amat of La Puente, Mia went 2-for-3 with a homer and three RBI. She followed that outing by going 3-for-4 with a homer and three RBI in a 12-8 victory over Granada Hills Charter.
Camacho’s home run streak has obviously bumped up her season totals. She finished last week hitting .483 with eight homers and 32 RBI for the 13-8-1 Heralds. This includes an outing of two homers and seven RBI in a tourney win back in March over VOHS.
Harvard-Weslake pitcher Justin Kirchner has a no-hitter this season and a commitment to Yale. Photo: hwbaseball / Instagram.com.
Cal-Hi Sports Southern California
Baseball Player of the Week
Justin Kirchner
(Harvard-Westlake, Studio City) Jr.
What stood out most about Justin throwing a no-hitter for the Wolverines last week in a 8-0 win over Loyola of Los Angeles wasn’t just the accomplishment but what head coach Jared Halpert said afterward.
“I’m thrilled for the young man,” Halpert told the L.A. Daily News. “That’s one of the best performances we’ve had in my 14 or 15 years here.”
Halpert has had a some great players if you don’t know, including current MLB stars Max Fried of the New York Yankees and Pete Crow-Armstrong of the Chicago Cubs. Another was 2014 State Player of the Year Jack Flaherty, who is now with the Detroit Tigers and had the last no-hitter for Harvard-Westlake that same season.
Kirchner needed 98 pitches to throw his complete game no-hitter. He struck out 13 although he did have three walks and two hit batters. In the seventh inning, Kirchner struck out the first two batters he faced and got a ground ball to end it.
Kirchner is known just as much around the Harvard-Westlake campus for academics as he is for baseball. He has committed to Yale University in the Ivy League for college. He had a strong outing early in the season against Huntington Beach when many MLB scouts came out to see Jared Grindlinger pitch for the Oilers. In the 4-3 win for Harvard-Westlake, Justin pitched five innings with three hits allowed and five strikeouts.
The Harvard-Westlake squad began this week with a 13-4 record and was No. 11 in the Cal-Hi Sports State TOP 35 Rankings. The Wolverines had a game on Tuesday vs St. Joseph of Santa Maria.
Cal-Hi Sports Northern California
Baseball Player of the Week
Jensen Hirschkorn (Kingsburg) Sr.
Our next stop is the San Joaquin Valley town of Kingsburg located 21 miles southeast of Fresno along Highway 99 and long known as the hometown of U.S. Olympic track legend Rafer Johnson. It’s in Kingsburg where Major League Baseball scouts have been headed this season to check out 6-foot-7 pitcher Jensen Hirschkorn of the Vikings.
We have covered Jensen’s older twin brothers Houston and Holden Hirschkorn at Kingsburg in previous seasons. They are now playing at UC Davis. Jensen has committed to LSU, but may not go there as he’s been in the top 30 of at least a few MLB first round mock drafts that we’ve seen.
This is a good week to pick Hirschkorn as a player of the week. He’s also been hitting quite well for Kingsburg this season and last week he pitched a no-hitter in five innings with eight strikeouts and went 2-for-3 with a homer and four RBI in a 12-0 win against Bakersfield. Jensen didn’t pitch in the team’s other game last week, but went 4-for-4 at the plate with two homers and three RBI in a 12-6 victory over Tehachapi.
In 23 innings of pitching entering a series this week vs Washington of Easton, Hirschkorn has a 3-1 record with a 1.22 ERA plus 43 strikeouts in 23 innings. As a hitter, he was batting .596 on 28 hits with five homers and 23 RBI.
Piedmont Hills of San Jose has one of the top power hitter in Northern California this season and Isabella Flores also can pitch. Photo: softball.phhs / Instagram.com.
Cal-Hi Sports Northern California
Softball Player of the Week
Isabella Flores (Piedmont Hills, San Jose) Jr.
For our final stop this week, we head to the San Jose neighborhood in the northeast area of the city just to the south of the city of Milpitas on the Interstate 680 corridor. It at Piedmont Hills where we find a two-way softball standout who is hitting a lot of homers at the plate combined with a lot of strikeouts as a pitcher.
Flores, who has committed to the University of Redlands, had one of those hit-pitch games last week when the Pirates beat Leland of San Jose, 7-1. She went 3-for-4 at the plate with homer and in the same game tossed a four-hitter with 12 strikeouts. Isabella also went 3-for-5 last week with a home run to help Piedmont Hills post a 7-0 triumph vs Christopher of Gilroy.
For the season for the 14-1-1 Pirates, who have this week off before returning the following week to play a big non-league game vs state-ranked Archbishop Mitty, Flores ranks among the MaxPreps reported state leaders in homers with 12. This includes a two-homer game two weeks ago and another two-homer game the week before that. She also has 36 RBI and is batting .709.
In the circle, Flores doesn’t rank among state leaders, but she’s been very good. After last week, she’s gone 6-1 with a 1.45 ERA. She also has 78 strikeouts in 38 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: @CalHiSports
One Comment
Love the Rafer Johnson reference.
Congrats to Hirschorn on his recognition.