Del Oro gets revenge on league rival Oak Ridge to win NorCal softball title

For the Del Oro High School softball team, the CIF Sac-Joaquin Section finals loss hurt, for sure.

But the Golden Eagles of Loomis had a chance to prove they weren’t a runner-up team in the CIF Northern California Regional brackets. They also had a chance for redemption against the Oak Ridge Trojans, the team that beat Del Oro in the section finals on May 24.

Even with a depleted roster, Del Oro found a way to persevere on Saturday morning in El Dorado Hills, beating the top-seeded Trojans 5-3.

The Golden Eagles were down to 10 players on the roster for NorCals. Some players elected not to compete in the regional playoffs due to schedule conflicts with travel ball or other personal reasons. And Sierra Foothill League MVP, team captain and Sacramento Bee Player of the Year candidate Abby Davidson had a senior trip to Europe that was pre-planned back in August.

It would have been easy to write off the Golden Eagles for those reasons alone. But the remaining team had other plans.

“We lost a couple players, but we kept our heads straight and knew that, obviously, those players are very valuable for our team, but if we have the right mentality, we can go get it and still win,” said Delaney Osborne, Del Oro’s last remaining senior on the roster. “We have the core of the team here and what we needed to win, and I knew that if we stayed with our head locked in, we could go all the way.”

Del Oro rode the left arm of sophomore pitcher Mikayla Finn, who has been a workhorse for the Golden Eagles in the circle, working all but one inning during the section and NorCal postseason. And on Saturday, she helped carry her team to the ultimate prize.

Finn battled through 11 hits and three runs allowed against, and her teammates backed her up at the plate, tallying 11 hits of their own to hoist the program’s first regional title. There is no state championship game in softball, so Del Oro bows out as the top-ranked team in Northern California for all divisions after being state-ranked No. 1 by Cal-Hi Sports down the stretch of the season, prior to the section loss to Oak Ridge.

“Mentally, we all knew that we had to all do our jobs and do them well, because there’s obviously no one there to sub us in if we make a mistake,” Finn said. “We just knew that commitment coming into it, we just wanted it so much, and we just did our jobs as best we can, and here we are.”

Finn struck out three hitters Saturday, finishing with 210 strikeouts for the year in just 148 1/3 innings. Freshman leadoff hitter Caelyn Campos went 3-for-4 with three doubles and scored twice. Chloe Champas also collected three hits and drove in a run. Avyn Brower and Kate Brown drove in runs in the first inning to set the tone for the Golden Eagles’ day.

After an uncharacteristic 7-19 season a year ago, Del Oro finished this season 31-2, with the only two losses coming against Oak Ridge.

“Last year’s team was divided. It had a left and a right, but it also had a middle, which put us in three locations: A, B and C, and A, B and C never came together,” said Del Oro head coach Sean Erickson. “This year, they showed up on Day 1. I could feel the difference. They said to me, ‘Last year cannot have any residue to this year. Last year was last year. This year is this year, and we can’t look back.’ I give all the credit to the players for disconnecting that tether that was tied to last year’s negativity. They unhooked it. They dropped it. I think they sunk it.”

Campos led the game off with the first of her three doubles and later scored on a single from Brower. Two batters later, Brown drove in Brower and Emma Johnson to give Del Oro a quick 3-0 lead before taking the field defensively.

Champas drove home Campos with another single in the fourth to extend the lead to 4-0. Finn, meanwhile, had a shutout through 4 2/3 innings before Oak Ridge scored on an RBI single from Brooklyn Paratore to make it 4-1 after five frames.

Del Oro added an insurance run in bizarre fashion in the top of the seventh. Campos again led the inning off with a double to set the table for Champas, who beat out a bunt single. But Campos was caught in a rundown and thrown out at home trying to score from second on the play. Champas then tried advancing to second, but an errant throw went into center field and allowed Champas to score on a little league-style home run.

Oak Ridge clawed back in the bottom of the seventh on an RBI groundout from Carmen Montes de Oca and an RBI single from Emery Glaser to make it 5-3. But Finn got the final batter to pop out to her battery mate Brown, and the celebration began.

“She knew what she wanted to do. She showed up today with that plan in her mind, and she went out there and executed that plan,” Erickson said of Finn. “What more could a coach or a parent ask of their child or their player, their student-athlete, then show up with a plan, show me your maturity, your preparation and your responsibility, and then show me the achievement to get it done.”

Oak Ridge settles for blue banner

For Oak Ridge, Paratore, Glaser and Aly Watson each finished with two hits. Ellison Schroeder, another Bee Player of the Year candidate, went the distance, allowing 11 hits, four earned runs and striking out eight in her final high school game. She’s headed to Santa Clara to continue her softball career and study business analytics.

The Trojans conclude their season at 26-5 after going for a section championship three-peat and the team’s 12th overall blue banner, the most of any softball program in section history.

This story was originally published June 7, 2025 at 2:21 PM.