Last year, the varsity softball team had a great season, and the team even made school history. They were undefeated in the Cypress division, and made it to CCS for the first time since 2003.
As a result of this, they moved up a league, and are now playing in the Mission Division against teams like Pacific Grove and Carmel.
With a new league standing brings higher expectations. “Seeing that we got moved up a league and we’re going to be facing tougher teams, the expectation is to either win the league or come in the top two and qualify for the playoffs and just go from there,” Coach John Nieto said.
Nieto has been the head varsity coach for over six years, as well as being a coach for travel ball and rec ball for 20+ years. One of the things that helped fuel last year’s success, and hopefully will again this year, were the players taking advantage of the opportunities they were given. It’s also one of the things that has kept Nieto at Alisal. “I just like the school, I think we have good kids here and they work hard,” Coach Nieto said. “They don’t take things for granted so I enjoy being here on campus with the girls.”
Even though the team made it to CCS, they did lose and this was felt deeply by some of the players. “I think it kinda left a bad taste in their mouth last year when we lost our first game in CCS,” Nieto said. “The girls know we have a lot of good players returning and we have a great freshman class, so I think they expect to qualify again and do even better in the playoffs.”
This year, there are 11 girls in total. Returning are 3 seniors – Jasmine Estrada, Carmelina Esquivias, and Jazmine Rubio; junior Mianicole Frias; sophomores Micah Smith, Aaliyah Ruiz, Leana Tinajero-Sanchez, and Nevaeh Lopez; and freshman Vivica Castaneda, Ameryse Thatcher, and Iliana Cruz.
While they may be young, they’re definitely skilled. Last year, Lopez, a pitcher, as well as Smith, got First Team All-League as freshman. Ruiz was named Second Team All League. “I’m really expecting a lot from our sophomores because they already had a year of experience playing varsity as freshmen and I’m really looking forward to seeing them improve,” Nieto said.
A couple of challenging aspects has been the weather and practice time before the Daylight Saving change. “We can’t start practice until 4:30 and it gets dark pretty early because the girls have to go to tutorials, so that’s been a challenge in terms of trying to get caught up and getting our practice time in due to it being dark early.” Nieto said. They had two games cancelled/postponed due to weather, including their first league game against North Monterey County.
The team was struggling a bit in the early going, but the start of league has provided a spark. The team is 4-1 through their first five games and is in 2nd place. “For most of us, our expectations are to just keep on hitting, no matter what.” returner Micah Smith stated.
This season is really all about going big or going home, especially for the senior players. “I’m hoping for another league title and hopefully we can make it to CCS and even take it further like getting a ring,” senior Jasmine Estrada said. “I mean it’s my last year so I’m hoping and going for everything this season.”
For the rest of the season Nieto is focusing on specifics. “I would like for us to play a little bit better defense, because we hit the ball last year very well, but at times we kinda struggled in defense so we’re going to be focusing on that this season,” he said. “As a team, we definitely want to make the playoffs and finish top two in the league this year.”
