2023 remembered for highest highs and tragic lows in Ventura County sports
Ventura County made an impact from the Rose Bowl to the Super Bowl and no matter the draft — NBA, MLB or NFL.
High school athletes shone on the sectional, regional, state, national and even international stage.
A new high school opened play in Oxnard. A new sport found a foothold among high school girls. And we said goodbye to legends we've known for a long time.
This was the Year in Sports in Ventura County:
Big-game players
The year kicked off with two locals playing on the biggest stages in America’s preeminent sport.
In January, Ventura native and Newbury Park graduate Cameron Rising became the first Ventura County quarterback to start two Rose Bowls, after leading Utah to a second straight Pacific-12 Conference title.
Utah fell 35-21 to Penn State after Rising was knocked out of the game in the third quarter, suffering a knee injury that would sideline him for the entire 2023 season.
In February, Jaylen Watson won a Super Bowl ring with the Kansas City Chiefs.
The former Ventura College All-American started Super Bowl LVII, a 38-35 win over Philadelphia at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, at cornerback and recorded three tackles.
First-round values
Camarillo High graduate Jaime Jaquez Jr. won the Pacific-12 Conference Player of the Year award at UCLA in March and was drafted No. 18 overall in the NBA Draft by the Miami Heat in June.
That has worked out quite well so far for the Heat, as The Star’s 2019 All-County Boys Basketball Player of the Year is averaging 13.8 points and 4.0 rebounds through a team-high 31 games played as a rookie.
The Oakland Athletics have taken a liking to Thousand Oaks High stars in recent years.
That trend continued in July, when the Oakland Athletics tabbed former Lancers star Jacob Wilson with the sixth overall pick in the Major League Baseball Draft in Seattle.
The highest draft pick in the NFL Draft was former Oaks Christian running back and UCLA star Zach Charbonnet, who was drafted in the second round by the Seattle Seahawks.
Next up
In April, The Star asked the question “Who will be Ventura County's next big leaguer?”
Two of the area’s top candidates, Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Jonny DeLuca and Atlanta Braves pitcher Darius Vines made their big league debuts in the summer.
DeLuca made his Dodgers debut in Cincinnati on June 7. The Agoura High graduate played 24 games for the National League West champions, hitting .262 with home runs against Pittsburgh and future World Series champion Texas, before a hamstring injury knocked him off the roster.
Earlier this month, DeLuca was traded to Tampa Bay with pitcher Ryan Pepiot for pitcher Tyler Glasnow and outfielder Manuel Margot.
Vines, a St. Bonaventure High and Oxnard College graduate, became the first visiting pitcher to make his debut in the thin air of Coors Field, pitch six innings and giveup two runs or less in Atlanta’s 7-3 win over Colorado on Aug. 30.
‘X’ hits the spot
The X Games provided the county’s biggest spectator event of the year, drawing more than 50,000 fans to the Ventura County Fairgrounds in July to see skateboarding legends like Nyjah Huston, BMX champions like Garrett Reynolds and local Curran Caples compete.
Highlights included Arisa Trew in the women’s vert, Brady Baker in the BMX dirt and skateboard legend Tony Hawk competing in the men’s vert at age 55.
The three-day event sold out of merchandise for the first time. Ventura city officials were praised for the $250,000 deal.
Medal collectors
Ventura County’s running pedigree continues to be elite.
Ventura's Sadie Engelhardt is the top female runner in the Class of 2025.
In May, the sophomore won the state championship in the girls 1,600 and 800 meters at the CIF-State track and field championships in Clovis, becoming the first runner to double in the two events in almost 50 years.
In November, Engelhardt defended her CIF-State Division II girls cross country title, while leading Ventura High to its first team title in 19 years.
Leo Young and Lex Young graduated Newbury Park High and moved on to Stanford University, but not before Leo won the Under-20 national cross-country title in Richmond, Virgina, in January.
At the World Athletics U-20 Cross Country Championship in Bathurst, Australia, in February. Young led the United States to a surprising bronze medal — its first since 1982 — by running the fastest time for a non-East African athlete.
Welcome, welcome
The year also meant new additions.
Brand-new Del Sol High in Oxnard, which opened its doors for the first time in August, gave its new athletic department the opportunity to build programs from the ground up.
Girls flag football was introduced by the CIF-Southern Section. Westlake and Oxnard were among the first-year programs that thrived. But it was Royal, led by quarterback Morgan Arrasmith, who won the inaugural Ventura County championship.
State bound
The Buena High boys basketball and St. Bonaventure football teams both enjoyed memorable postseason runs to state championship games.
Buena reached the CIF-State Division III state title game at the Golden 1 Center, home of the Sacramento Kings, before losing to Oakland High.
St. Bonaventure won the CIF-SS Division 3 title on George Mann’s game-winning field goal and miraculously survived the state regional against St. Augustine in San Diego, before falling to Folsom in a dramatic CIF-State Division 1-A state championship bowl at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo.
The Simi Valley football team followed up its first CIF-SS football title in its 99-year history with its first appearance in a state regional, a wild loss at Central Valley Christian in Visalia.
Heroics by midfielder Zaina Barakat and goalie Emma Ott lifted the Moorpark High girls soccer team to the CIF-SS Division 3 and CIF-State Division III regional championships.
The quality of competition in the Marmonte League was on display throughout the baseball postseason, as league foes Calabasas and Westlake won the CIF-State Division II and Division III regional championships, respectively.
Record breakers
The Newbury Park High football team kept county record-keeper Derry Eads busy this fall.
Quarterback Brady Smigiel and receiver/safety Shane Rosenthal broke some of the biggest records in Ventura County history during the Panthers’ 10-win season, which included a share of the Canyon League title and a berth in the CIF-SS Division 5 final.
Smigiel, just a sophomore, broke county records for touchdown passes in a season and a career.
Rosenthal, just a junior, broke county records for interceptions in a season and a career, as well as the single-season record for receiving yards.
Smigiel was named The Star’s Offensive Player of the Year. Rosenthal was named The Star’s Defensive Player of the Year.
National champions
Isabella Veljacic’s 17th-minute wonder strike lifted the Cal Lutheran University women’s soccer team to a 1-0 win over Washington University (Mo.) in the NCAA Division III national championship game on Dec. 2 in Salem, Virginia.
Coach Frank Marino’s team became the first unranked team, and the first program from the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference to win the national title.
The Regals joined the 2017 baseball team, 2015 women’s volleyball team, the 2010 and 2007 women’s water polo team, and the 1971 football team as Cal Lutheran teams to win national titles.
Rams to leave county
The Los Angeles Rams announced that they were ending their seven-season “temporary” association with Cal Lutheran University and the city of Thousand Oaks in November.
Ventura County played a part in the NFL team’s return to Southern California in 2016 and its Super Bowl runs in 2019 and 2022.
But the Rams, which had trained at its practice facility on CLU’s North campus since 2016, will move 20 miles east to Woodland Hills in 2024.
Saying goodbye
Tragedy struck Westlake High in August, when senior football and lacrosse player Julius Poppinga died after a severe asthma attack.
The Warriors honored Poppinga’s No. 58 when they returned to the field against Thousand Oaks on Sept. 1.
“It means so much more now,” said Westlake junior Ethan Curtis told The Star. “He loved football so much. He would not want us to shut down and not play.”
Ventura County said goodbye to two of the most influential football coaches in county history.
Rio Mesa High’s John Reardon and Moorpark College’s Jim Bittner, who were the winningest football coaches in Ventura County history when they retired in 1994 and 2011, respectively, died weeks apart in February.
Former Newbury Park and Oaks Christian softball coach Pete Ackermann died in 2022, but he was remembered last spring, the first without his wit and wisdom in the dugout. He was inducted into the CIF-SS Hall of Fame, along with former Camarillo High wrestling coach Ron Wilson, in October.
The Star also lost its own legend in December, when reporter and columnist Loren Ledin died after a long battle with cancer.
Ledin covered Ventura County sports for more than 40 years, including stints with the Thousand Oaks News-Chronicle and Simi Valley Enterprise.
“From a young, young age he truly loved sports,” said Linda Felix, Ledin’s sister. “And he built a career that allowed him to describe the events of sports. It was never about the money with Loren, rather than being able to tell a good story about the subjects he loved.”
Joe Curley is a staff writer for The Star. He can be reached at joe.curley@vcstar.com. For more coverage, follow @vcsjoecurley on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: 2023 brought highs and lows in Ventura County sports