San Jose Bellarmine’s Nathan Chew (left) celebrates with teammates after he had game-winning hit last week in win vs King’s Academy. At right is Koa Peppe of Bonita High (La Verne), who hit five homers over two games last week. Photos: 49erscalhi / Instagram.com & James Escarcega / SGV Whittier Prep Sports Zone.
Since our state players of the year honors in boys basketball came out on Tuesday, this week’s players of the week post has been done a bit later than usual. We have two players we included from outings on Tuesday of this week and we have two who had games on Wednesday. We’re still proud to present these latest four from San Jose and Petaluma in Northern California and Simi Valley and La Verne in Southern California.
We hope you enjoy this free post on CalHiSports.com. All regular season State TOP 35 or State TOP 25 rankings for baseball/softball will be Gold Club posts plus state record updates and state stat stars. You can sign up today to get all of our Gold Club content right now at just $4.99 for per month. Three-month sub also is offered. For details, CLICK HERE.
CHECK OUT CALGAMESWANTED.COM
Created for Coaches by Coaches for California Varsity High School Head Coaches and Athletic Directors, Start building your schedule with CalGamesWanted.com.
User friendly to take the stress out of scheduling.
Notes: For these honors, we consider CIF Central Section players for Northern California. To nominate anyone, email markjtennis@gmail.com.
Cal-Hi Sports Northern California
Baseball Player of the Week
Nathan Chew (Bellarmine, San Jose) Sr.
The oldest school in the state, with a founding date of 1849 as Santa Clara Prep, is where we go for this week’s NorCal baseball honoree. Chew had two big outings at the plate for the Bells last week, and continued to stay hot in his first game of this week.
Nathan’s week began last week when the Bells got past King’s Academy of Sunnyvale, 3-2. He had a home run and two doubles as part of a 4-for-4 outing with two RBI. Chew’s second double knocked in a run in the bottom of the seventh that gave Bellarmine the win. Later in the week, in a more comfortable 14-4 win against Hollister, Chew didn’t get any extra base hits but went 3-for-3 with four RBI.
Bellarmine started a big series in the West Catholic Athletic League on Tuesday of this week vs Serra of San Mateo and came away with a 2-1 win. Despite the low-scoring pitching duel, Nathan went 2-for-3 with a double and one RBI. Bellarmine (No. 22 in our state rankings at the start of the week) improved to 14-2 and plays Serra again on Friday in San Mateo.
With the recent hot streak, Chew has raised his season batting average to .422 with eight doubles and eight RBI.
Makayla Bignardi from St. Vincent de Paul (Petaluma) has batted more than .800 in her first eight games this season. Photo: St. Vincent de Paul Athletics / MaxPreps.com.
Cal-Hi Sports Northern California
Softball Player of the Week
Makayla Bignardi
(St. Vincent de Paul, Petaluma) Sr.
A school located a several blocks north from the former home of our longtime girls basketball/softball analyst Harold Abend near downtown Petaluma (he’s now in Fullerton) is where we head to check out this week’s NorCal softball honoree.
As Harold has said many times when he does these writeups (he’ll be doing more soon), we use our player of the week and state stat star features to help us track entries into our all-time state records, which we compile not just in softball but also for football, boys basketball, girls basketball, and baseball. What puts Makayla over the top for this week is her outing of going 4-for-4 with four doubles and six RBI on Tuesday of this week in a wild-and-wacky 28-15 win by St. Vincent de Paul vs Elsie Allen of Santa Rosa. The four doubles for one game is what will gain Makayla an all-time state list mention.
Bignardi has already had several similar outputs with her bat this season. In two separate games, both lopsided wins by the Mustangs over Santa Rosa High and Credo of Rohnert Park, she blasted two home runs and she had eight RBI.
While she does do some pitching, it’s the hitting that landed Bignardi a spot on the 2025 Cal-Hi Sports all-state small schools team. She batted .656 in 18 games with 14 doubles, four homers and 38 RBI.
The future college player at D3 Farmingdale State College in Nassau, New York in just eight games so far this season is hitting .808 with six homers, eight doubles, six homers and 34 RBI.
Cal-Hi Sports Southern California
Softball Player of the Week
Koa Puppe (Bonita, La Verne) Jr.
Entering her games this week, one of the state’s hottest hitters was Koa. The Bearcats’ opponents knew it, too. That’s why Puppe didn’t get much to hit in the team’s first two games of the week, a 10-0 win on Monday over Walnut and a 12-3 win on Wednesday over Glendora. Bonita improved to 18-5 overall and 3-1 in league after the two wins.
This is a player of the week selection for last week, however, and what Puppe did still applies. In a 10-9 victory vs Santiago of Corona, Koa went 3-for-4 with two homers and three RBI. Two days later, the Bearcats knocked around Monrovia in a 12-2 contest. Puppe had one of the best games of her prep career with three homers and seven RBI and she finished 4-for-4.
To get started this week in that 10-0 win vs Walnut, although she was pitched carefully, Koa still managed to get two hits with a double and two RBI.
After the Wednesday game from this week, Puppe ranked among the reported state leaders by MaxPreps with 10 homers in 23 games. She also was batting .444 with 33 RBI. She already has 32 career homers with one more season still to go and already has a total high enough for inclusion into the all-time state records.
And to make last week even better, Koa hit those five homers in two games during the same week in which she committed to Cal State Fullerton.
Simi Valley junior Andrew Nicklaus has emerged as a top-flight catcher and hitter this season. Photo: Simi Valley HS Athletics / MaxPreps.com.
Cal-Hi Sports Southern California
Baseball Player of the Week
Andrew Nicklaus (Simi Valley) Jr.
With a last time like Nicklaus, one would expect that Andrew would have a sweet swing. The emerging catcher for Simi Valley sure does and is being featured this week for two big outings he had for the Pioneers in a pair of wins last week against Oak Park.
Simi Valley has already improved to 11-9 with a 10-0 mercy-rule win this week against Moorpark. Nicklaus had a quiet day, but last week he went 3-for-4 with two homers and seven RBI in a 11-1 triumph over Oak Park. The Pioneers then enjoyed a similarly dominant 14-1 win over the Eagles and in that game Nicklaus went 2-for-3 with a homer, double and three RBI.
Andrew already has been named an athlete of the week by the Ventura Star. He came into the season expecting to have a bigger role for Simi Valley after batting .282 and hitting two homers as a designated hitter and part-time catcher. Nicklaus is more of the every game catcher this season and his offensive numbers are way up. He started the season going 2-for-4 and 2-for-3 in his first two games and this week he was batting .439 with four homers and 21 RBI.
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
