Aliso Niguel's Jaslene Massey taking aim at state title in shotput
(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)
When Jaslene Massey smiles, it's contagious. You want to return the smile. She has a bubbling personality that encourages track and field fans to cheer for her to succeed.
In the shotput, she has developed into the favorite to win a state championship. She won the Orange County championships with a mark of 50 feet, 7 inches. She's the first California high school girl to surpass 50 feet since 2016.
Advertisement
Last week she won the Arcadia Invitational. On Saturday, she won at the Mt. SAC Relays. She finished second last year in the Southern Section Masters Meet at 46 feet and third in the state championship after being a high jumper as a freshman.
'It's definitely come as a shock to me,' said Massey, a junior who has a 4.4 grade-point average. 'Last year I thought I was going to go 47 feet. Now I want to keep working.'
She deserves to be considered one of the best female athletes in Southern California, because she's also a standout volleyball player and was a youth figure skater. Her athleticism has been put to good use in the shotput, something she had not done until high school.
'She's so strong and explosive,' her club coach, Mike O'Dell, said.
Advertisement
O'Dell first saw her at a meet and went to her parents to offer support. 'I saw her throw a shotput like it was a three-pointer,' he said.
She's 5 feet 9 with long arms, making her a good fit for the event.
'Being long really helps,' said Sherman Oaks Notre Dame throwing coach Nick Garcia.
O'Dell helped revise Massey's training, including in the weight room.
'The way I weightlifted completely changed,' she said. 'I was doing it on my own freshman and sophomore year. I think my explosive ability from volleyball really helps. He's been able to build me up.'
NFL draft
This coming week will be a big week for fans of Servite High football, because two former Friars, defensive lineman Mason Graham and receiver Tetairoa McMillan, are expected to be selected on Thursday during the opening night of the NFL draft.
Servite's Mason Graham has 10 sacks.
They were teammates on Servite's 2021 team that lost to Mater Dei in the Southern Section Division 1 championship game before moving on to Michigan and Arizona, respectively.
Advertisement
Former Servite coach Troy Thomas, at the invitation of Graham, will attend the draft in Green Bay.
There's lots of unique things to like about both in this time of change in the sports world. For one, they were both four-year players at Servite and multiple-sport athletes. Graham also played rugby and wrestled. McMillan played basketball and volleyball. "They check every box. High character, durable," Thomas said.
Both endured the pandemic of 2020-21. It affected Graham's recruiting. He didn't become a top recruit until late in his senior season. "Every year, he got better and kept growing," said Thomas, who remembers him as a 6-1, 200-pound freshman. "He was 265 junior year and 285 senior. He played like a linebacker on the defensive line."
McMillan was one of the best athletes at Servite. His intelligence and toughness came through in practices and games. "His control in the air has been a big factor," Thomas said. "He does so many things well. It seems effortless and seems easy when you watch him. He's very competitive and very tough."
Another player who should be taken taken in the first two rounds is former Oaks Christian and UCLA linebacker Carson Schwesinger. He started out as a walk-on for the Bruins and also had his recruiting affected by the pandemic even more, graduating in 2021 after a brief spring season of football. His story will be told again and again about a teenager seeking a chance and trusting the process.
Advertisement
Sign up for the L.A. Times SoCal high school sports newsletter to get scores, stories and a behind-the-scenes look at what makes prep sports so popular.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
21 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Minnesota Vikings announce special uniform matchups for 2025 season
The Minnesota Vikings announced that they will wear their two popular alternate uniforms in 2025 three times. They're hoping to find success in them once again after going 2-0 in alternate uniforms last year. The Vikings announced they will wear their Winter Warrior uniforms on Christmas Day against the Detroit Lions. Last year was the first time the Vikings used the Winter Warrior attire, a full white-out that included a white helmet. They defeated the Chicago Bears 30-12 in Week 15. They will wear their throwback uniforms in Week 2 when they face the Atlanta Falcons in their home opener on Sunday Night Football, and in Week 18 when they host the Green Bay Packers. Last year, the Vikings wore the throwback uniforms in a 34-7 dismantling of the Houston Texans in Week 3. Let's hope the Vikings find the same success in 2025 that they did in 2024 when changing up their uniforms. This article originally appeared on Vikings Wire: Vikings announce special uniform matchups for 2025 season
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Quinshon Judkins is the last unsigned draft pick
With Bengals' first-round draft pick Shemar Stewart finally under contract, only one 2025 selection remains unsigned. Browns running back Quinshon Judkins, the fourth pick in round two, is not under contract. And it's not about whether he'll receive a fully-guaranteed contract. The player taken before him did, and the four taken after him did. This is about the possibility, if not the likelihood, that Judkins will land on paid leave as soon as he signs and shows up, due to a recent arrest for misdemeanor domestic battery. His better move will be to resolve the case, negotiate an unpaid suspension, and then sign his contract. This assumes the Browns still want him. They say they're doing their due diligence. Which, in theory, could prompt them to do something like relinquish their rights to him. It's unclear whether they would do that. He's accused of punching his girlfriend in the mouth/chin with a closed fist. And he's the third Browns player in the past year to face domestic violence issues, joining defensive tackle Mike Hall and linebacker Devin Bush. Someone will inevitably give Judkins a second chance; his talent guarantees that. The question is whether it will come with the Browns. And, if it does, how many games he'll miss before he's cleared to play.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
With the Christian Wilkins release, Pete Carroll and his Raiders show a blunt culture building approach
HENDERSON, Nev. — As the Las Vegas Raiders stretched and went through warmups Friday, team owner Mark Davis sat more than 50 yards away under a shaded platform. Laid out before him was an ocean of new faces that have come to define his franchise's latest sweeping reboot — from the majority of his retooled coaching staff, his new starting quarterback, a first-time general manager, to more than 40 new players threading through the training camp depth chart. And of course, one very notable omission who became an ex-Raider on Thursday: prize 2024 free agent defensive tackle signee Christian Wilkins, who was dumped by the team in a jarring move that had already seen Las Vegas void $35.2 million of his guaranteed salary last month. It's a staggering end for a player who was expected to wreak havoc on AFC West offenses and give star Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby a running partner who could help balance the scales against Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. Instead, Wilkins appeared in only five games before suffering a Jones fracture in his left foot, setting the table for a potential surgery and rehabilitation that conceivably should have had him back onto the field this month. He wasn't. And now he won't ever be for the Raiders, who sent a football and culture message that might as well have been plastered onto a theater marquee at the entrance of the team's Henderson practice facility. Something like: If you're not going to be playing for us, you're not going to be sticking around with us. [Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2025 NFL season] Without a doubt, that's how this new regime is planning to operate moving forward, refusing to hang onto what it views as roster-building errors from past regimes and also aiming to be aggressive in moving on from any mistakes it might commit in the future. With head coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Spytek at the controls, the mandate is to make sure the next iteration of the Raiders doesn't fall into familiar (and seemingly longstanding) pitfalls and get dragged further by roster-building blunders. For the Raiders, Wilkins became that when the team demanded for months some kind of cogent plan — most likely involving surgery — to get him back into the fold and playing football. The Raiders' brass didn't see that materializing, and that ultimately ended the relationship between a hopeful building block and the brain trust neither signed him nor saw him play a single snap. 'We took a long time to make our decision,' Carroll said. 'We watched our way through the whole thing. We're keeping really clear with what we said. I think there was no clear path to his return, and so we just had to move on.' Talking more generally about his philosophy with players, Carroll later added, 'Each practice is an opportunity for us. Each day is a statement of who we are, what we're all about. Are we there again? Are we consistent? Are we battling?' With that in mind, this looks like a roster that's going to continue to experience considerable churn through next offseason and into 2026. Spytek comes from organizations that were built in a multitude of ways, but his preference with the Raiders is to draft and cultivate the vast majority of the team's roster and then accentuate down the line when opportunities present themselves to add a player through free agency or via trade who can potentially stimulate another significant step forward. You can already see some of those fingerprints on this version of Carroll and Spytek's team. Among the swath of new talent is an 11-player draft class that is thriving under a clear reality: Those who make the team are going to be expected to play a role — and potentially a massive one — as rookies. Eventually that will roll into a 2026 draft class that already has 10 picks to continue lining the roster with talent. [Get more Raiders news: Vegas team feed] That 2025 class includes first-round running back Ashton Jeanty, who will be playing as monumental a role on the offense as he can behind a line that is still on a developmental and chemistry trek. Interestingly, Jeanty has cut a similar seriousness to acclimating to life as a pro as one of Spytek's favorites with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — wideout Chris Godwin. Like Godwin's entry into the NFL in 2017, Jeanty put in serious time locking down all of his off-field priorities before hitting training camp. That included buying a house, getting settled into his community and building a routine so that he's not getting pulled into a multitude of directions when the season starts. Inside the Raiders' front office, that's known as walking into the league ready to be a professional player. And when it's a trait of one of your potentially special players, it can create a meaningful image for the team to promote to other incoming players. That's exactly what the Buccaneers did with Godwin's example, and it's expected to carry over with Spytek and his rookie running back. The Raiders would like to thread the Wilkins release through that needle, too. Rather than reminding the fan base and critics of the litany of free-agent signing mistakes and trade addition blunders that played a part in scuttling past regimes, the coaching staff and front office wants the decisions made and work from this camp to punctuate the foundation that's getting constructed. If you want to play football and want to be about the team, you're in. Anything less is just a waiver wire statistic that hasn't happened yet.
