Two of our weekly honorees this week are Cheyenne Roth of California City (left) and Daunte Bell from Millikan of Long Beach. Photos: calcityravens.softball / Instagram.com & the562.org.
One of our four honorees for this week had his performance on a very special day for the opposing team’s head coach. We also have players this week ranging from way up north to San Diego County. Our visits this week are to California City and Gridley in Northern California and to Long Beach and La Jolla in Southern 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 Northern California
Softball Player of the Week
Cheyenne Roth (California City) Sr.
We start out this week going to the northern Antelope Valley town of California City, which actually is in Kern County and also is in the CIF Central Section. That may seem odd for the Ravens’ sports teams to be considered Northern California but they’re in the Central Section and they are for our purposes.
A year ago, Cal City had the 2025 State Small Schools Player of the Year in baseball with Blake Moore. The school has a highly regarded small school player this spring in softball with Roth.
Cheyenne got last week going with a 5-for-5 outing with three doubles, four runs scored and five RBI in a 28-0 rout of Mammoth (Mammoth Lakes). That was followed the next day when she went 3-for-3 with homer, double and three RBI in a 11-1 victory vs Immanuel Christian of Ridgecrest. Her week still wasn’t done. Roth homered again and went 3-for-4 with three RBI in a 12-3 triumph against Bishop. The powerful first base/catcher also does some pitching and had a one-hitter in five innings vs Immanuel Christian.
Roth has had two other five-RBI outings this season and ranks among the reported leaders to MaxPreps with 53 RBI in helping the Ravens win their league title and finish 19-7 for the regular season. She only has two homers for the season, but has eight triples and 18 doubles. Roth also has one of the top reported batting averages in the state with a minimum of 50 at-bats at .654.
The season is not yet over for Cal City, but playoff pairings in the CIF Central Section had not yet been released at the time of this writeup.
Tanner Abbott of Gridley has earned a scholarship from UC Santa Barbara, which knows how to get players ready for the next level. Photo: fivetool.org.
Cal-Hi Sports Northern California
Baseball Player of the Week
Tanner Abbott (Gridley) Sr.
The second stop this week takes us to Butte County (29 miles south of Chico) and 56 miles north of Sacramento to the small town of Gridley, which is mostly known in California high school sports for its outstanding, long-running boys basketball tournament held every December for more than 50 years.
It’s at Gridley where we find this week’s NorCal baseball honoree but it’s a place not unknown to college and MLB scouts. Abbott has been a top player since his freshman season when he went 9-0 on the varsity as a pitcher with a 1.33 ERA. The current senior standout now has a scholarship to UC Santa Barbara for his future plans and may be the top overall player in the CIF Northern Section this season, especially since Red Bluff’s Cooper Sides transferred down south to Orange Lutheran for his senior season.
Abbott had perhaps the best day of his already long, successful career last week in leading the Bulldogs to a 11-0 win over Oroville. He not only pitched a no-hitter (six innings) but among the 18 outs that were recorded almost every one of them (17) came via strikeout. In the same game, Tanner went 1-for-3 at the plate with four RBI. Later in the week, Abbott added a 3-for-4 batting line with two RBI in a 16-4 win against Oroville.
That no-hitter last week also was the third for Abbott this season, which reportedly leads the state. He earlier had a 5-inning no-hitter against Corning and a seven-inning no-hitter against Las Plumas of Oroville. The 17 Ks was a new season high. Abbott’s team has a 9-2 win already this week in the CIF Northern Section D3 playoffs over Live Oak. Abbott didn’t give up a run in four innings of pitching and went 3-for-4 as a batter. That win moved Gridley into Friday’s first game of the section’s super regional style D3 semifinals and finals vs top seed West Valley (Cottonwood).
For the season, Tanner is batting .418 with 28 hits and 28 RBI. The pitching is what he’s known for most and his season stats in those categories are impressive, including 9-0 with a 0.66 ERA and 122 strikeouts in only 53 innings.
Cal-Hi Sports Southern California
Baseball Player of the Week
Daunte Bell (Millikan, Long Beach) Sr.
East of the Long Beach Airport and north of the 405 freeway is where Millikan High is located, but it was a game at Lakewood (north of Long Beach) where our SoCal baseball honoree had the performance that netted him this week’s selection.
Bell and the Rams were the opponents of Lakewood in the final regular season game for retiring Lakewood head coach Spud O’Neil. Spud is a coach we’ve covered almost for all of the nearly 50 years we’ve been following California high school baseball and his last regular season game brought out many former players and coaches, including former CIF Southern Section commissioner Rob Wigod.
O’Neil is leaving the Lakewood program with nearly 1,000 career wins (No. 2 in state history) but his team didn’t get a win on that special day. Instead, Bell did it all for Millikan in a 8-0 win. The University of Houston commit took the mound as the starter and blanked the Lancers on a three-hitter with no walks and seven strikeouts. He also came through on offense with a two-run inside-the-park home run. With the win, the Rams clinched the outright title in the Moore League.
Bell also had a dominant outing in his previous start on April 29 with a two-hitter and eight strikeouts in a 3-1 win for Millikan against Long Beach Poly. He’ll enter a CIF Southern Section D3 playoff game on Friday vs South of Torrance at 6-3 with a 0.77 ERA plus 80 strikeouts in 63 2/3 innings. Bell’s homer vs Lakewood was only his second of the season, but he’s now batting .406 with 28 hits and 22 RBI.
La Jolla High’s Jacey Taylor ranks among the CIF San Diego Section season leaders this season in home runs, RBI and batting average. Photo: lghs_softball / Instagram.com.
Cal-Hi Sports Southern California
Softball Player of the Week
Jacey Taylor (La Jolla) Sr.
For our final stop this week, we visit one of the most beautiful parts of San Diego County north of Mission Bay and southeast of the UC San Diego campus. For this writeup, we also had to wait until the Vikings played a Tuesday afternoon game this week in their regular season finale vs Hoover of San Diego.
While Taylor has been one of the most productive players in the CIF San Diego Section all season and had big numbers in on one game last week, in the 26-6 win on Tuesday vs Hoover it was teammate Aviv Laska who had eight RBI. Jacey stayed hot by going 3-for-4 with a run scored. La Jolla will play another regular season game this week vs High Tech and then will find out its section playoff positioning a few days after that.
In last week’s games, Taylor only had one RBI in a 8-4 win against Kearny of San Diego, but in a 19-5 victory vs Crawford she went 4-for-5 with a double, triple, four runs scored and five RBI. in the previous week before that, Jacey jumped on San Ysidro for two homers and five RBI plus she had one homer and four RBI in a win over High Tech.
For the season and not including Tuesday’s scores, Jacey ranked No. 1 in the San Diego Section with 56 RBI. This includes outings of five RBI, six RBI and five RBI in her first three game this season.She also was sitting in a tie for third in the section for home runs with 10 and sixth in batting average at .635.
Taylor, a four-year varsity standout at La Jolla, will head to Baylor University in Texas for college where she will major in health and kinesiology.
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