Prep softball rankings: Top sophomores get ready for recruiting; league titles decided

Julie Ojo stood by the scorer’s table at Sheldon High school on a windy day, trying to keep track of her two youngest daughters while watching sophomore Jaylee Ojo pitch her final game of the year for The Bee’s No. 2-ranked Huskies softball team.

“She’s had a great year,” Julie Ojo said. “But she’s still learning, getting better. There’s room for improvement and she’s ready for the next step.”

The next inning, Ojo was at the plate and hit a wind-aided moon shot over the 40-foot high scoreboard that bears the name of Mary Jo Truesdale, the 24-year head coach at Sheldon. The blast disappeared into the trees behind the scoreboard and landed an estimated 280 feet from home plate. It was her Sac-Joaquin Section-leading 11th round-tripper. She finished the game throwing a two-hitter with 12 strikeouts in just five innings.

She’s ready.

Her Rancho Cordova U-10 rec ball teammates, now all juniors at Sheldon, had a good 2021 season, too. Dakota Kennedy hit her ninth homer of the year early in the game. Reina Zermino had eight long balls and D’Auna Johnson had five on a team that leads the state in that department with 38. Kennedy is headed to the University of Arizona, Zermino to San Jose State and Johnson to Cal.

No one exactly knows where Jaylee will be pitching — and hitting — a few years from now, but there is no doubt she will have many choices, including Pac-12 schools. College coaches cannot contact this year’s sophomores until midnight Eastern time on Sept. 1. The phone might be ringing off the hook come 9 p.m. Aug. 31 in the Ojo house. Her pitching and hitting abilities make her one of the top players in the Sacramento area.

Two other sophomores will be getting some phone calls from major softball powers. Aissa Silva of No. 4 Elk Grove, who has missed some games recently with an injury, posted amazing stats in the circle. She struck out 198 batters in 123 innings and finished with a microscopic 0.40 ERA while hitting .303. Rylei Trujillo of Center hit .567 with five home runs and averaged two strikeouts per inning. All three pitchers would love to play in the Pac-12, following in the footsteps of other great Sacramento softball stars. The final push to impress happens on the ball fields this summer.

League Wraps

Sheldon won the Delta League going away with a 12-0 record. St. Francis finished second with a late surge. Elk Grove, with Silva out, slipped to third. No. 1 Rocklin finished its season with a flourish, winning the Sierra Foothill League title and posting an 18-2 overall record. The pitcher/catcher combination of Brook Thompson and Jayla Castro was too much for opponents to overcome. Both seniors, Thompson is headed to Boise State and Castro is bound for UCLA.

The Foothill Valley League wraps up this week and it comes down to No. 9 Oakmont at No. 8 Lincoln, two schools who have achieved higher goals this season. Oakmont must contend with Rio Linda on Tuesday before its season finale at league-leading Lincoln on Thursday.

The Vikings’ lead off hitter, Grace Johnson, leads the state with 33 stolen bases. She has not been caught. She gets on base a lot, hitting .638. In the circle Kennedie Magorian is leading the FVL in strikeouts and teammate Aubrey Smith leads the league in ERA.

For Lincoln, it’s been a team effort. Ava Tingey, Laila Alves, Araceli Jaimes and Natali Martinez have been hitting for average. Alves leads the league with nine home runs.

No. 11 Vista del Lago will match up against No. 20 Center on Monday in an intriguing nonleague game featuring Center’s Trujillo and Vista’s junior sensation shortstop Tayler Biehl and senior pitcher/third baseman Lexi Holihan. Biehl is batting .683 and Holihan is hitting .562 with nine home runs for the Eagles. Biehl’s batting average ranks second in California among players with at least 50 at-bats.

In the Metro League, No. 18 Laguna Creek has a game left on the schedule Tuesday but it won’t affect the standings. The Cardinals clinched the school’s first No. 1 finish in the league with a win over McClatchy on Thursday.

Rio Americano is a game behind the VDL in league play, which finishes up June 10, a week after most schools have graduated.

Covid Chaos

While the 2021 season was filled with uncertainty and chaos, the consensus among players, coaches and fans is that it’s a great improvement over 2020, when all play was canceled in March. Over the winter, hope outweighed optimism. Then the positive impact of COVID-19 vaccines could be seen and finally a softball season of some kind could be projected.

Still, no one could be sure if an entire season was sustainable.

Not wanting to miss out on any opportunity to play, schools scrambled to schedule games even before they scheduled scrimmages. Some players opted out, or played other sports. Coaches had to assess if they would have enough players to fill a varsity roster. Freshman and JV teams were folded. Some leagues preferred to hold off a full month, others started early but only scheduled games within their own conference.

There were umpire shortages. The multi-sport spring season had an impact. Fourteen varsity or JV softball programs folded, some midseason. Seventy-five games were dropped as a result of COVID-19 complications, including some this week.

This would normally be the time four the Sac-Joaquin Section playoffs, but due to the uncertainties with the pandemic, the athletic directors from each league, who make up the section’s board of governors, decided in favor of making sure all softball teams would have a chance to play this year. That was Jan. 20, when the pandemic still raged.

With quarantines for seniors in place to ensure graduation ceremonies go off without a hitch, fitting in a postseason would have been challenging to say the least.

In-season tournaments were also canceled this year. Many teams use tournaments to size themselves up against schools they don’t always schedule in the regular season. It would have been good to see talented teams such as No. 6 Vanden, No. 10 Sutter, No. 12 East Nicholaus and No. 16 Marysville go head-to-head with the top Sacramento-area schools in a tournament.

The Bee’s Top 20

1. Rocklin (18-2)

2. Sheldon (15-8)

3. Roseville (19-4)

4. Elk Grove (18-8)

5. Del Oro (16-6)

6. Vanden (11-0)

7. St. Francis (15-6)

8. Lincoln (18-4)

9. Oakmont (16-5)

10. Sutter (19-0)

11. Vista del Lago (13-3)

12. East Nicolaus (19-1)

13. Folsom (12-7)

14. Pleasant Grove (11-11)

15. Granite Bay (15-10)

16. Marysville (16-5)

17. Ponderosa (13-6)

18. Laguna Creek (11-6)

19. McClatchy (8-7)

20. Center (7-7)

On the Bubble: Bear River (8-6), Colfax (9-8), Cordova (13-3), Cosumnes Oaks (9-8), Inderkum (13-7), Liberty Ranch (11-2), Pioneer (10-3), River City (8-5), Rodriguez (9-3), Rosemont (14-4), Vacaville (6-7), Yuba City (12-8)

Coaches, get your All-Metro nominations into PeteBeeSports@gmail.com and Jdavidson@sacbee.com.

This story was originally published May 24, 2021 at 10:50 AM.