PLAY BALL: The Who's Who of the CIF Southern Section softball championships
Florida-bound pitcher Lilianna Escobar, of JSerra Catholic.
One of the nation’s best and certainly largest high school softball tournaments continues Friday with the California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section championships.
Some 266 teams in eight 32-team brackets got underway Thursday and continue with more first-round play, including the rugged top Division I which includes Top 25 national squads: No. 8 Murrieta Mesa (25-1), No. 9 Norco (25-2) and No. 17 Fullerton (24-3).
Top seed (in the D1 tournament) Murrieta Mesa opened with a 10-0 win on Thursday and takes on La Habra (21-7), a 3-2 winner over Los Altos, on Saturday.
Norco hosts Marina (19-8) and Fullerton hosts Cypress (16-12) Friday at 3:15 in first-round play.
Other Top 25 teams in California, according to MaxPreps computer rankings, in the D1 tournament are No. 5 JSerra Catholic (20-8), No. 12 Orange Lutheran (19-8), No. 13 King (22-6), No. 15 Oaks Christian (25-3), No. 16 La Mirada (22-4), No. 17 Etiwanda (22-3), No. 20 Chino Hills (20-7), No. 23 Notre Dame-Sherman Oaks (21-3) and No. 24 Riverside Poly (21-7).
Defending champions Norco (D1), Los Alamitos (D2), Marina (D3), Long Beach Poly (D4), St. Bonaventure (D5), University (D6), Rancho Mirage (D7) and Hueneme (D8).
Among Southern Section playoff senior players who have already signed to Top 50 Division 1 college programs (according to On3 Rivals):
Arizona — Lilly Hauser (Murrieta Mesa, pitcher)
Arizona State — Sofia Hernandez (Whittier Christian, infielder), Alyssa Torres (Valley View, catcher)
California — Emoji Lam Sam (Long Beach Poly, infielder),
Florida — Liliana Escobar (JSerra Catholic, pitcher)
Kansas — Jocelyn Alatorre (El Modena, outfielder)
Kentucky — Cheri Thompson (King, infielder)
Michigan — Mia Valbuena (Marina, pitcher)
Nebraska — Brooke Lebsock (King, catcher)
Notre Dame — Morgan Fitzpatrick (Los Alamitos, infielder)
Oklahoma — Ki’ele Ho-Ching (Long Beach Poly, infielder), Malaya Majam-Finch (Fullerton, pitcher).
Oklahoma State — Peyton May (Norco, pitcher)
Ole Miss — Charli Calas (Linfield Christian, infielder), Madelyn Armendariz (Orange Lutheran, infielder)
Oregon — Kyle Tafua (El Modena, catcher)
Purdue — Taylor Day (Paraclete, outfielder), Kylie Rocha (Vista Murrieta, catcher)
Stanford — Kale’a Tindal (Harvard-Westlake, outfielder)
UCLA — Aubrey McLaughlin (Roosevelt, infielder), Ava Tapia (Upland, catcher)
See complete Southern Section brackets here:
Among from the other nine California sections to get play underway this week are the Central Section, LA City Section, Sac-Joaquin Section, and Northern Section.
About VYPE: Is a high school and youth sports media network based in Houston Texas, promoting and celebrating young athletes, the sports they play, the coaches who mentor them and the fans who cheer them on. The 18-year organization has provided vibrant, in-depth digital images and print stories primarily to the Texas and South region but is branching out, making waves and building relationships throughout the country, starting this month in the Golden State of California.
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About the author: Born in Hollywood, raised in Santa Barbara and based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Mitch Stephens has been a high school sports journalist in California since 1984, the year LeBron James was born. His newspaper days began at the Contra Costa Times and Bay Area News Group chains, expanded to the San Francisco Chronicle in 2001 — where he still spreads the prep sports gospel — with full time national writing, reporting and column gigs at MaxPreps (2007 to 2022) and SBLive/High Schools on SI (2022 to present). Among his most treasured feature subjects as preps were Derrick Henry, Paige Bueckers, Patrick Mahomes, Sabrina Ionescu, Jeremy Lin,
