Santa Margarita’s Kaitlyn Merritt will be remembered as one of the county’s top girls field athletes of all time, having won the CIF-SS title in the pole vault for all four of her high school years.
The event has some rising stars worth watching Friday at the CIF-SS Masters Meet and, perhaps, in next week’s CIF State Meet.
Canyon sophomore Rachel Baxter’s clearance of 13 feet, 1 inch was the best of this past Saturday’s CIF-SS Finals and won her the Division 2 championship. Santa Margarita sophomore Kate Thomas cleared 13-0 to share the Division 3 championship with Merritt.
Baxter’s best mark as a freshman was 10-6. Merritt was clearing 13 feet as freshman, so Baxter’s dramatic improvement from ninth to 10th grade is interesting.
Taking a look around Orange County high school sports:
• The Masters Meet qualifiers list can be found here at ocvarsity.com.
• The Masters Meet is at Cerritos College. It is the qualifying meet for the CIF State Meet which is June 5 and 6 in Clovis. The Masters Meet starts with the girls pole vault at 3:30 p.m., with running events beginning at 6 p.m.
• The top six finishers in each Masters event advance to the state meet. Admission to the Masters Meet is $10 for adults, $5 for high school students with valid student identification and for children ages 5-13. Parking is $5.
• No transfers can be verified, so far, in boys basketball. Certainly there will be some in coming weeks as summer league basketball begins and we see guys playing for teams they did not play for this past season.
• Villa Park’s annual summer basketball league begins June 10. It includes Brea Olinda, Canyon, El Toro, Mater Dei, Saddleback Valley Christian, Sunny Hills and Villa Park.
• The competition for the Register/OC Varsity athletes of the year is thick. Among the large-school boys candidates are Sam Darnold of San Clemente and Eric Patton of Foothill. Both were MVPs of their league in two sports – Darnold in football and basketball, Patton in basketball and volleyball. Cypress’ Quentin Pounds has been a standout in football, basketball and track and field.
• The best of the boys single-sport stars is Huntington Beach volleyball’s TJ DeFalco. Big-time players are at their best in big-time games. DeFalco had eight of his 41 kills in the fifth game of the Oilers’ win over Corona del Mar in Saturday’s CIF-SS Division 1 championship.
• The large-school girls candidates include fantastic one-sport stars like Mission Viejo softball pitcher Taylor McQuillin and Mater Dei basketball’s Katie Lou Samuelson.
• The Orange County Athletic Directors Association’s athletes of the year were Darnold and Samuelson.
• Among the small-school athlete of the year candidates are Brethren Christian record-setting quarterback Conner Miller, and Orangewood Academy basketball’s Marcus Berkley, who would have been an all-league, first-team player in many of the county’s large-school leagues. Small-school girls notables include Crean Lutheran swimmer Ella Eastin, Crean cross country runner Lauren Maurer and Laguna Beach water polo’s Makenzie Fischer.
• Probable starting pitchers for today’s El Dorado-Huntington Beach baseball game: Nick Sprengel, who is 10-1 for El Dorado, and Noah Davis, who was All-County last year for Huntington Beach and is 5-2 this year. Huntington Beach is No. 2, behind JSerra, in the Register’s county media top 10; El Dorado is No. 7.
• Six teams in this week’s baseball top 10 have been eliminated from the playoffs.
• San Clemente baseball is batting .500 in coin flips. The Tritons lost the coin flip that decided the home team of their second-round game against Dos Pueblos of Goleta. They won the coin flip that has them home against Bonita of La Verne in a Division 2 quarterfinal today.
• San Clemente baseball is batting very well in games. The Tritons have scored 22 runs over two playoff wins.
• They are lagging, though. Excelsior Charter of Victorville has scored 47 runs over two Division 7 baseball playoff games.
• Three of the four Academy League teams that qualified for the baseball playoffs advanced to the Division 6 quarterfinals: No. 1-seeded Sage Hill; No. 2-seeded Crean Lutheran and Oxford Academy.
• Crean, Oxford, Mission Viejo and Sunny Hills are the county teams still alive in the baseball playoffs that did not win league championships. Mission Viejo and Crean are second-place teams. Sunny Hills and Oxford finished third.
• Four teams that played in the Division 1 softball quarterfinals, the final eight, Thursday were county teams: Canyon, El Modena, Los Alamitos and Pacifica.
• Savanna’s softball team outscored its two opponents by a cumulative score of 31-2 over the first two rounds of the Division 6 playoffs. The top-seeded Rebels play Pasadena Poly in the quarterfinals today at Katella.
• The CIF Southern California Regional finals in boys volleyball are Saturday at Cerritos College. They start with Division III at 3 p.m. followed by Division II at 5 p.m. and Division I at 7:30 p.m. Admission is $12 for adults and $8 for students with valid student identification and for children 13 and younger.
• County athletes and teams excelled at the CIF-SS Track Finals this past Saturday. The athlete who excelled the most was a non-county athlete, Vista Murrieta sprinter Michael Norman. He ran a wind-aided 20.39 in the 200 that is the fastest in California history under all conditions.
Contact the writer: sfryer@ocregister.com
