Daily Pilot Softball Dream Team: Marina’s Mia Valbuena had no match in playoffs
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Mia Valbuena couldn’t quite put her finger on it as far as when she began taking an interest in softball, but it came early, and it came with a desire to be like her mom.
Between pictures, videos and news clippings their grandmother had saved, Mia and her twin sister, Avi, became familiarized with the playing career of their mother, Willa Parchen.
That was all the motivation they needed, said Valbuena, who reckons they were 4 or 5 when they discovered their source of inspiration. They were told about Parchen’s path to a scholarship at Creighton University. As far as they were concerned, they had the blueprint set before them.
“Oh, that’s what I want to do when I’m older,’” Valbuena would respond.
“We obviously wanted to be just like her,” she added. “We’re like, ‘Oh, we’re going to go to Creighton, too.’ She’s like, ‘Well, no, you don’t have to,’ because we just wanted to be just like her.”
Valbuena, now a University of Michigan commit, appears to have quite a bright future ahead of her in the game. The past few months were rather fruitful, too.
The junior right-hander led Marina to the CIF Southern Section Division 3 championship, shutting down the opposition throughout the playoff run. Valbuena is also the Daily Pilot Softball Dream Team Player of the Year.
Marina (19-13) ended a 30-year CIF title drought for the program with an 8-1 win over Westlake at Deanna Manning Stadium on May 30. Upon the final out, Valbuena came together with catcher Gabby DiBenedetto, a battery that has been together since before their high school days.
“That was probably the best decision we’ve ever made was to convince her to go to Marina because she’s now like my best friend,” said Valbuena, who met DiBenedetto through her pitching coach Chrissy Haines in the eighth grade.
“She knows me so well, and it really shows in the field, I think, because we don’t even have to communicate through words,” Valbuena said. “I think I can tell what she’s thinking through her face and her body language now, and I think she probably feels the same way. We know what’s going on with each other.”
Valbuena, the Sunset League Most Valuable Pitcher, dominated from the circle with a devastating riseball and a drop curveball. She allowed just two runs across five postseason starts, recording 56 strikeouts in 33 innings.
For the season, she posted a 19-10 record with a 1.88 earned run average across 175⅓ innings pitched. She threw 11 complete-game shutouts and tallied 293 strikeouts.
Valbuena was also one of the Vikings’ more productive hitters. She had a .337 batting average with 21 runs batted in, seven doubles and two home runs.
“It’s only a couple months out of the year that I’m even practicing hitting, or hitting in games, so I do my best to try to keep up with everyone else that’s hitting yearlong,” Valbuena said. “It takes a lot more focus, I think, for me than pitching when it comes to that. Moving into the No. 4 spot at the end of the year, I didn’t even expect that, but I guess a little goes a long way sometimes in the close games. I was just trying to do my part to help the team out and help myself out on the offensive side.”
At different times in the year, the twins said they play for each other. Pitchers love run support, and Avi, a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga commit, provided by driving in four runs in the CIF finals. At first, they played for their mom, who played and pitched at Marina before them.
There’s room for more in the circle of trust these days.
“Our chemistry as a team, we really bonded this year,” Valbuena said. “Something clicked where we all became so united in our goals, and we all had the same idea of what we wanted for the entire year. I think that unity kind of made me able to know that my teammates had my back. They were playing for me, and I was playing for them.”
COACH OF THE YEAR
Dan Hay / Shelly Luth
A pair of faces that have been around the game for a long time, the duo helped guide the Fountain Valley Vikings to their sixth CIF title and first in three decades. Luth had previously been the head coach for back-to-back Division I titles for the program in 1994 and 1995. It was a new day for Hay, who raised a CIF championship plaque for the first time. Hay was part of the 2025 class of inductees into the Orange County Softball Hall of Fame.
FIRST TEAM
Courtney Kols
P | Fountain Valley | Sr.
A fixture in the pitching circle for all four years of her career at Fountain Valley (14-12), the right-hander will go on to play for Drexel University. Kols was a Sunset League first-team selection for the Barons, who narrowly missed out on a return to the postseason in a winner-take-all game against Edison to determine the league’s fourth playoff berth.
Gabby DiBenedetto
C | Marina | Jr.
DiBenedetto sported a .444 batting average, knocking in 20 runs and scoring another 15 runs in support of her battery mate. The Maryland-bound backstop supplied eight doubles, one triple and a home run among her team-leading 44 hits.
Bree Carlson
1B | Huntington Beach | So.
Huntington Beach (22-8) packed a punch offensively, especially from its twin towers manning the corners in the infield. Carlson, a Sunset League first-team selection, hit .500 with an area-leading 11 home runs to go with a dozen doubles. She drove in 53 runs and scored 38 runs.
Kaila Arakaki
2B / SS | Edison | Jr.
Arakaki was the prototypical leadoff hitter, reaching base at a high clip and failing to sit still once she accomplished step one. The middle infielder showcased her speed with 19 stolen bases, coming around to score 22 times. At the dish, she batted .360 with nine doubles, a triple and a home run for Edison (11-15).
Tea Gutierrez
3B | Huntington Beach | Sr.
Gutierrez handled the hot corner defensively while hammering the ball in the batter’s box. The Jacksonville State commit boasted a .578 average with nine home runs, three triples and eight doubles. The Sunset League Most Valuable Player scored 45 runs and had 41 runs batted in.
Morgan Drotter
SS / OF | Huntington Beach | Sr.
A natural outfielder, Drotter played at shortstop this season because it was an area of need for the Oilers. The Cornell commit posted a .405 batting average with 11 extra-base hits, including a game-winning three-run home run in the late innings of a key game against Marina in Huntington Beach’s journey to a share of the Sunset League title with Los Alamitos, which was the CIF Division 2 champion.
Cali Bennett
OF | Huntington Beach | Sr.
Huntington Beach saw the heart of its order put up some gaudy numbers, and it was often Bennett setting the table. The center fielder hit .431 and scored 36 runs from the top of the lineup. She compiled 10 doubles, three triples and one home run. The Louisiana Tech commit also drove in 19 runs and recorded 10 stolen bases.
Kaya Collado
OF | Ocean View | Sr.
A four-year starter for Ocean View (2-22), Collado has committed to Pacific Lutheran University. Collado boasted team-high production with a .429 batting average, 25 runs scored, seven doubles, two triples and 17 stolen bases.
Hannah Stolba
2B / OF | Edison | So.
While Arakaki made things happen at the top of the order, it was up to Stolba to turn the lineup over. She excelled in that role with a team-best .435 batting average. The Chargers’ left fielder produced eight doubles and three home runs, scoring 19 runs and driving in 15 runs.
Avi Valbuena
DP | Marina | Jr.
The Viking were largely a station-to-station team that did not take many chances on the base paths. They had more sacrifice bunts than stolen bases, often looking for the clutch hit. Valbuena, who hit .397 this season, had a three-hit, four-RBI game in the Division 3 final.
SECOND TEAM
Position, Name, School, Year
2B / OF Zariah Billinger, Huntington Beach, Sr.
OF Aubrey Catron, Edison, So.
P Juliette Foutz, Huntington Beach, Fr.
P Sophia Gutierrez, Los Amigos, So.
SS / 3B Sophia Hannappel, Edison, Sr.
C Ella Kim, Fountain Valley, Jr.
OF Victoria Rios, Costa Mesa, So.
OF Rachel Ruiz, Marina, Sr.
C / 1B / 3B Ally Shaw, Newport Harbor, So.
1B Makenna Smith, Corona del Mar, So.
2B / OF Kileigh Villaloblos, Fountain Valley, Jr.
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