Rodriguez High School senior Mia Marques signed a national letter-of-intent this season to play basketball at Southern Oregon University in Ashland. (Aaron Rosenblatt/Daily Republic file)
Rodriguez High School senior Mia Marques signed a national letter-of-intent this season to play basketball at Southern Oregon University in Ashland. (Aaron Rosenblatt/Daily Republic file)
FAIRFIELD — Several area student-athletes have been able to sign the dotted line and earn financial assistance to attend school and play sports at four-year colleges.
Vanden High School announced its 12 recipients during a signing ceremony on Monday in the gymnasium. Vacaville earned 10 after another standout athletic season that resulted in Monticello Empire League School of the Year honors again for the program’s overall success.
Rodriguez ended up with four athletes earning opportunities. Fairfield and Armijo had one each.
The Vanden football team was represented by Jason East, Demetrius Mance, Daveyon Williams and Tru Kendrick. East is headed to Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Mance will play at Cal Lutheran in Thousand Oaks. Williams is going north to Southern Oregon in Ashland. Kendrick is headed to the Ivy League and Yale in New Haven, Connecticut.
Vikings’ Sophia Alejandro-Montano, Olivia Parks, Piper Olson and Ariah Isadore-Watson received offers in volleyball. Alejandro-Montano will be going to the University of La Verne in Southern California. Parks will play for Lakeland in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin. Olson is headed for Cal State Monterey Bay. Isadore-Watson also accepted an offer from William Penn in Oskaloosa, Iowa.
The Cueva sisters, Isabella and Mia, each earned softball scholarships from Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo. LaMiracle Lebon from the Vanden girls basketball team signed with the University of the Pacific. Gabriel Apilado of the boys basketball team is headed overseas to Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines.
Alondra Toriche of Rodriguez earned a soccer scholarship from Dominican California in San Rafael. Mia Marquez will take her basketball talents to Southern Oregon. In the fall, swimmer Ava Bautista signed with San Jose State and volleyball standout Arden Billingsley accepted an offer to DePaul University in Chicago.
Sariah Williams of Fairfield High earned one of the first women’s flag football scholarships from La Sierra University in Riverside. Armijo’s three-sport standout, Willie Nickson, will play football and hopefully quarterback the Alabama State football team in the near .
Vacaville is represented by a wide variety of athletes. Jaiden Oldwin earned a baseball scholarship from national power Coastal Carolina and softball star Hayden Kyne is headed to prestigious Notre Dame.
Paige Witte and Natalya Stonebraker of the Vacaville softball team also earned scholarships. Witte will attend Weber State in Ogden, Utah, and Stonebraker is headed to East Tennessee State in Johnson City.
Ebony Lewis of the Vacaville volleyball team signed with Cal State San Marcos. Track and field distance runner Jackson Stream is headed to Chico State. Britain Gonzales will play basketball at William Jessup.
Logan McBride will play soccer at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon. Wrestler Ryan Espiritu is off to Colorado School of the Mines in Golden and wrestler Elijah Almarinez will compete for Maryville University, located in Town and Country, Missouri.
The list is very impressive but what does the future hold? The road to athletic scholarships for high school seniors has become more difficult with the advent of the college portal and NIL (name, image and likeness).
“The college landscape has changed so much from just five years ago with the portal and NIL,” Vanden athletic director Sean Murphy said. “This just shows how impressive it has been the last four years for our kids to earn scholarships.”
The transfer portal allows athletes to let their current coaches know they are leaving and announce to others that they are available. NIL means that athletes can now profit from others using their name, image and likeness.
“The college baseball coaches I have talked to have said exactly that,” C. Wood athletic director and baseball coach Nick Voight said. “They can get a proven guy out of the portal and not have to worry about if a freshman develops. It’s gonna be tough to get scholarships out of high school in the future for all sports.”
Many other top athletes, like those at Wood, will take their skills to the community college level. It gives them an opportunity to develop and showcase their skills at the next level and possibly later earn offers from four-year colleges.
Note: Was anyone omitted from this roundup? Please email Daily Republic sports editor Matt Miller at mmiller@dailyrepublic.net to add their name to future listings.
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