Two of our honorees for this week are Deakin Brinkley of Bakersfield Christian (left) and Amaya Sigala from Oak Hills of Hesperia. Photos: Boras Classic & Oak Hills HS Athletics / MaxPreps.com.
Los Gatos pulls off a rare feat in that there was a Wildcats’ baseball player honored last week as the NorCal pick and then this week we have a Wildcats’ softball player with the same. This week’s other stop for Northern California is Bakersfield. For the south, we head to Temecula and Hesperia.
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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
Baseball Player of the Week
Deakin Brinkley (Bakersfield Christian) Jr.
Believe it or not, but Deakin already had been selected as the NorCal player of the week for baseball before the Eagles took on Independence of Bakersfield in a game played on Monday afternoon. Brinkley had his third straight mammoth outing. He finished 3-for-4 with two homers and five RBI. He could have done little or nothing on Monday and still would have been chosen for what he did last week.
The week began for the 2025 member of the Cal-Hi Sports all-state sophomore team when he went 2-for-2 with several walks, scored three times and hit two homers in a 11-0 win vs Bakersfield. The Drillers then had no answers for stopping Deakin in a 19-9 contest. He went 3-for-3 with five runs scored, hit another homer and had two RBI. Brinkley wasn’t as crazy in a 8-0 win over Bakersfield to end the week, but still finished 2-for-3 with double, homer and three more RBI.
Counting the two previous games from before last week vs Highland of Bakersfield and then the first one this week, Deakin sure hasn’t been dinkin’ and dunkin’ to get his hits. In those five games, he has gone 13 for 17 with seven homers, one double, one triple, 16 runs scored and 20 RBI.
Bakersfield Christian began the season at 7-1-1 including wins over Buchanan, Clovis North and Clovis West and with a split with Frontier (Bakersfield) and was our No. 1 team in the Central Section. The Eagles then lost three of four at the Boras Çlassic for Northern California and dropped a league game to Ridgeview, but since then have won eight in a row heading into the second game of this week vs Independence.
Brinkley is batting .470 on the season with 10 homers, five triples, 31 runs scored, and 30 RBI. His home run total for the season has jumped him up to No. 1 in the Central Section and to No. 2 in California (according to MaxPreps).
Los Gatos High standout Grace Tucker is shown being greeted by teammates after a home run from earlier this season. Photo: Jonathan Natividad / Los Gatan.
Cal-Hi Sports Northern California
Softball Player of the Week
Grace Tucker (Los Gatos) Sr.
For our second stop of this week, we return to the same school nestled in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains but still considered part of the Santa Clara Valley. It’s at Los Gatos, where we stopped last week to check on baseball player Ethan Williams. We do try to spread around these weekly player honors as much as possible, but couldn’t resist when seeing that Tucker gained a state record book entry in softball for what she did in a 12-2 win last week against Capuchino of San Bruno.
Tucker led the way vs Capuchino by landing on second base with a double not once, not twice, not three times but did it four times. It takes four doubles to go in to the state record list (the record is five). We still haven’t done all the updates from last season (we’ll get to that after all-state teams are all out in basketball), but the only other CIF Central Coast Section player who’s ever had four doubles in a game is Sue Perlick from Notre Dame of Belmont with four in a 1983 contest vs Castilleja of Palo Alto.
Grace is a senior infielder who has committed to Dominican University in San Rafael. In the game in which she had the four doubles, she also went 4-for-4 with five RBI. The win also pushed Los Gatos’ record to 17-1 entering a game on Wednesday of this week vs Milpitas. The team’s only loss has been to state No. 15 Archbishop Mitty.
For the season, Tucker is leading the Wildcats in hitting with a .537 average on 36 hits. She also has five homers and 35 RBI. The Capuchino game was her only outing of last week. In her previous game from the week before, Grace went 4-for-5 with a triple and homer in a 11-3 win against Los Altos.
Cal-Hi Sports Southern California
Softball Player of the Week
Amaya Sigala (Oak Hills, Hesperia) Jr.
This week’s stop to find our SoCal softball player of the week takes us to the high desert region of the CIF Southern Section where we are honoring one of the top-ranked junior prospects in the nation.
Amaya has been inside the top 30 of the Line Drive Media top 100 and has been inside the top 70 of the Extra Inning Softball top 100. If you don’t know, Brentt Eads, our former Student Sports colleague and someone we still do free-lance work for in regards to national team rankings, started both of those rankings and web sites but is now doing the Line Drive Media site with his ex-wife running the other one.
Sigala is being honored this week for a pair of games she had last week and the season she is having for the Oak Hills High team. Those two games saw her go 2-for-3 with a double and two RBI in a 11-0 win vs Burroughs of Ridgecrest plus 3-for-3 with a triple, homer and six RBI in a 15-4 triumph against Serrano of Phelan. In the previous week, Amaya had similar totals in team loss to Apple Valley and a team win vs Sultana of Hesperia: 6-for-7 with three homers and eight RBI.
For the season and heading into a Wednesday game this week at Hesperia, Sigala is batting .617 with nine homers and 34 RBI.
All of those high player rankings that Amaya has acheived, though, are for her showings while playing for the California team of the famed Beverly Bandits travel ball organization. The Bandits are based in Chicago, but have a few teams in other states, including one in California. Sigala also just notched the 100th hit of her career, after which she was given a gift basket and celebrated with family and friends.
Sean Downs of Rancho Christian has been connecting for a lot of home runs in the last few weeks. Photo: Rancho Christian HS / MaxPreps.com.
Cal-Hi Sports Southern California
Baseball Player of the Week
Sean Downs (Rancho Christian, Temecula) Sr.
For our final stop this week, we head south from Hesperia down through the rest of San Bernardino County and on into Temecula on I-15 where we find another player who had a good week to go with a strong season. It’s at Rancho Christian, home of NBA superstar Evan Mobley and our 2026 State Coach of the Year in girls basketball Marlon Wells, where we land and find Downs.
Early in the season, when we were just getting started with players of the week in baseball, Sean could have been a selection for the week he had in back-to-back games vs Hillcrest of Riverside. He first went 3-for-4 with one double, one homer and eight RBI in a 13-0 win and then two days later he went 4-for-5 with one double, two homers and six RBI in a 18-7 victory.
For this past week, Downs continued to swing a quick, powerful bat. He went 2-for-4 with a homer in a 10-0 win vs Hillcrest and then added 2-for-4 with a homer in a 14-1 win vs Citrus Hill of Perris.
Downs ranks among the state leaders for RBI with 46 and his home run total of eight also isn’t far behind the leading total reported to MaxPreps of 12. Entering a Wednesday matchup with Valley View of Moreno Valley, Downs also had a .507 batting average. He’s also led the Eagles to a 20-3 record, which if we were able to do divisional state rankings (can’t do those anymore thanks to competitive equity formats) would have them highly ranked in the state among schools of their size and strength of schedule.
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:
