All-SCV Softball
Players of the Year: Valencia’s Ally Shipman and Shea O’Leary
A co-players of the year award is, in one sense, a cop-out. It is a refusal to decide.
However, this season the Santa Clarita Valley, and more specifically Valencia High School, featured one of Division 1’s best pitchers and one of its best hitters.
Shea O’Leary was as dominant and daunting with her arm as Ally Shipman was with her bat.
It was a two-player wrecking crew. Hence a two-player All-SCV Softball Player of the Year award.
Take Valencia’s March 18 CIF-Southern Section playoff opener against Great Oak of Temecula, for instance.
The Vikings managed only five hits in the game, but O’Leary, a junior, held the Wolfpack to one hit while striking out 12.
Then, in the fifth inning, Shipman blasted a two-run home run the other way to right field to win the game, 2-0.
Asked afterward about pitching to Shipman, Great Oak coach David Mercado said he felt his pitcher could get away with a low, outside pitch with the wind blowing in from right. Apparently not. Many teams didn’t risk it. Shipman, who didn’t strike out once this year as a junior, walked 33 times.
Some were intentional. Some were all but intentional.
Valencia coach Donna Lee slid her slugger into the leadoff spot so when teams did work around her early in the game, it at least put a runner on with nobody out. Often that meant a runner at second. Shipman successfully stole 14 times on 18 attempts. She scored 40 of Valencia’s 145 runs during a season that ended in the Division 1 quarters for the second straight year.
That’s not to say O’Leary wasn’t once again brilliant.
In six innings against Orange Lutheran, she allowed three hits and an unearned run. She struck out four and walked none.
Despite winning Foothill League Pitcher of the Year for the first time and a league title for the second year in a row, O’Leary said she’ll likely remember the final loss more vividly.
“All of us want to (advance through the quarters) so bad,” she said. “We’ve been
working hard on and off the field, and hopefully it pays off next year and we win it all. That’s one of our goals for next year.”
The Vikings are certainly poised to make another run. The team graduated only two players.
For Lee, it feels like Shipman and O’Leary, both three-year starters, have been with the program forever at this point.
“Oh, heck yeah,” Lee said. “Any time you have freshmen on varsity and they’re impact players, it does (feel that way), and you’ll have coaches say, ‘They’re still here?’ Yeah, they are still here.”
Here, in this case, is at the top of their game. Shipman, a University of Tennessee commit, batted .613 with 15 home runs and 39 RBIs this season.
O’Leary, a University of Texas recruit, struck out 240 batters in 211 2/3 innings. She owned a 1.22 ERA.
It all leads one to believe next year will be fun.