In only her second year as head coach, Amador Valley’s Teresa Borchard led her team to the ultimate prize - a NCS Divsion I title and a national championship. Borchard was named the Prep2Prep North Coast Section Softball Coach of the Year.

"I've been around a lot of kids," said Borchard, who’s been a part of Amador Valley's program the last eight seasons. "But these girls have something special. They work extremely hard, have amazing discipline yet they have fun in the process. They just have ‘It.'"

Led by superstar Johanna Grauer, who signed with UCLA, the top-ranked Dons finished the season 27-0. Amador boasts several other highly-recruited players. Shortstop Ashley Lotosynski will be attending UC Davis, catcher Victoria Molina signed with Stanford and center fielder Nicole Yozzo will play at Lehigh.

The dominant senior class ended its careers with a 98-8 varsity record, with five of those losses coming during its freshman year.

The Dons downed Granada 2-1 in the title game, and it was thier seventh one-run vvitory.

"I'm really proud of how mentally tough they are and how they handle pressure," Borchard said. "Out of all the kids I've coached, and I've coached a lot of teams, across the board, collectively, this team has the best mental game out of them all."

Daughter Nicole is a sophomore second baseman on the Columbia softball team. As a freshman Nicole capped her first season with a .276 batting average two homers and 24 RBI to rank second on the squad.

NOTE: We would like to thank our readers for all of the nominations you sent in for the season-ending NCS softball awards. It is a daunting task to narrow down our selections to just the top few as we recognize there are lots of great players who make contributions on the diamond that are not necessarily well-documented but mean a great deal to the success of their teams. We salute all of the players that have made this a wonderful season of NCS softball.