Two of this week’s honorees are Jade Curiel from Don Lugo of Chino (shown in travel ball uniform) & Landyn Plaut of Lincoln. Photos: X.com & Jordan Georgeson / Gold Country Media.
It’s never easy to come up with these four honorees each week and this week we even waited for Monday afternoon games to be played before finalizing two of the winning names. As usual, most of those who gained the final nod have accomplishments both with bat in hand or with ball leaving the hand as a pitcher. They are from city of Lincoln and Newark for Northern California while for Southern California they are from Irvine and Chino.
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Notes: For these honors, we also 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
Landyn Plaut (Lincoln) Sr.
Our first stop this week is in the Placer County community of Lincoln, which is becoming closer and closer to being connected to Roseville as those two Sacramento area towns get further and further developed. Plaut plays for the Lincoln Zebras. Despite the games that he had last week and all season, we still waited until we knew how the Zebras fared in a Monday game this week before finalizing Landyn’s honor. It all was fine as he hit his 10th homer of the season in a 6-1 win vs Marysville. If Lincoln had lost, the choice would have gone to someone else.
Plaut already had a no-hitter and 11 strikeouts on his resume from a 9-0 win in March vs Colfax. Last week, he added a perfect game with eight strikeouts in a five-inning 14-0 triumph by Lincoln against Center of Antelope. In the same game, Landyn went 2-for-4 with two RBI and hit his ninth homer of the season.
With the 10th homer added from Monday, Plaut may have taken over the reported state lead for the season, although it’s wasn’t immediately known if any others who were listed with nine on the MaxPreps’ leader board had any other homers on Monday or had unreported homers from later last week. Plaut also homered in another game last week vs Center, but only went 1-for-3 with a run scored in a Saturday loss to East Nicolaus of Nicolaus.
Earlier this season, the William Jessup University recruit who also has a 4.15 GPA went 4-for-4 with two homers and seven RBI in a 8-3 win vs East Union of Manteca and he had two homers and six RBI in a 9-1 victory vs Colfax.
Newark Memorial’s Andrea Tall will play next at San Diego State. Photo: Courtesy school.
Cal-Hi Sports Northern California
Softball Player of the Week
Andrea Tall (Newark Memorial, Newark) Sr.
In her four seasons for the Alameda County school located in the East Bay just north of Union City and south of Hayward, this hard-hitting slugger has been standing Tall for sure.
Andrea only played one game last week and it wasn’t competitive, but in the 24-3 romp past American of Fremont she went 4-for-4 with two homers, three RBI and five runs scored. In her previous game before that from the previous week, Tall smacked the ball hard for two doubles, one homer and drove in four runs in a 19-3 victory against Mission San Jose of Fremont.
Entering this week, Andrea had homered in four straight games with five in all in those games. That also put her season total at eight home runs, which ranks among the state leaders. Tall, who earlier this season had 5-for-6 game with seven RBI, was batting .579 for the season after 10 games with 22 hits, 22 runs and 19 RBI. In her four years, she also has a .493 average with 20 homers and and 78 RBI.
While some of the opposition has not been that great in high school at times, Tall also has been outstanding for her Extreme (CA) travel ball team. She has signed to play at San Diego State for next season.
Cal-Hi Sports Southern California
Softball Player of the Week
Jade Curiel (Don Lugo, Chino) Sr.
We head from the East Bay Area down to the LA County/San Bernardino County boundary town of Chino to find our SoCal softball winner for this week and it’s at a school made famous for retiring all-time great USA women’s basketball player Diana Taurasi.
Curiel played a Monday game this week as well and we didn’t switch away from her after she went 2-for-2 with a double and an RBI and had nine strikeouts pitching in a 14-4 triumph against Diamond Ranch of Pomona. Teammate Hayden Pitsenberger had a double, homer and five RBI, but we’re going with Jade for a game she had last week to help the Conquistadors defeat Ontario High, 8-2. In that game, she blasted three home runs, went 3-for-4 with five RBI and had nine strikeouts pitching.
Pitching is not the strength of Jade, but she can get a lot of strikeouts. In another win last week over Ontario (19-6), Curiel went 3-for-5 with a homer and three RBI and struck out 12 batters.
For the season after the Monday game, Curiel had an even .500 batting average in 14 games with seven homers, five double and 25 RBI. She also had a 5-2 pitching record with 68 Ks in 46 2/3 innings.
If all of that seems like it’s from someone who can play in college, that is correct. Jade has committed to Weber State.
Vincent DeMarco was all-league last year for Woodbridge and is in line for even greater honors after this season. Photo: Woodbridge Warriors baseball / X.com.
Cal-Hi Sports Southern California
Baseball Player of the Week
Vincent DeMarco (Woodbridge, Irvine) Jr.
Our final stop this week is near the middle of Irvine on the northern side of the 405 freeway near where UC Irvine is located on the southern side of the major freeway. It’s at Woodbridge where we find our SoCal baseball honoree after he led the Warriors to the title last week at the Ryan Lemmon Invitational.
In the tourney title game, which was an 8-4 victory against San Dimas, DeMarco pounded the ball for two doubles and ended 3-for-4 with four RBI. In an earlier big win in the tourney of 3-2 vs Foothill of Tustin, Vincent went 2-for-3 with a triple, run scored, one RBI and he pitched four shutout innings. The pitching that night also saw DeMarco post seven strikeouts.
Before the tourney last week and in his previous start as a pitcher, DeMarco mowed down the opposition with a three-hitter and he had 13 strikeouts in a 1-0 victory over Northwood of Irvine.
For the season, Demarco has a 0.19 ERA in 36 1/3 innings with 66 strikeouts. He also has a .283 batting average with one homer, six doubles and 13 RBI.
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.
