Taylor McQuillin, the 2015 pitcher from Mission Viejo, Calif., helped lead the Diablos to the No. 1 ranking in the Full Count Softball FAB 50 High School Rankings in 2014 and was honored as the Gatorade Softball National Player of the Year Award last year.

The Arizona-commit and her talented Diablo teammates were ranked No. 1 in the 2015 preseason FAB 50 High School Rankings and have continued to be on top through our latest rankings although they’ve had some close games, including a recent one that went down to the last out!

In today’s blog, Taylor talks about her year so far and even battling against a team led by one of her friends on her club team.

On that club team, OC Batbusters – Haning/Stith, Taylor won a PGF National Championship last summer and looks poised to lead the Batbusters again to a title run.

Taylor’s hard work on the field and in the classroom, where she has a 4.0 GPA, is evidenced by her being ranked as the No. 3 rated prospect in the 2015 class., but perhaps her greatest accomplishment is she has done all this despite having to overcome birth defects making her completely blind in the left eye and with only partial hearing on the left side.

Be sure to check out Taylor’s previous blogs and those of our other standout bloggers!

Video of Taylor receiving the Gatorade National Player of the Year

Official Gatorade National POY announcement 

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So far this year of high school softball has been going well for our team at Mission Viejo.

We have played in two of the top tournaments and also have had a great game against Los Al (Los Alamitos High) in the past two weeks. We have played a lot of the teams here in our area as well as top teams from around California in general.

Our team recently went to the Tournament of Champions out in Bullhead City, Arizona. We ended up winning the tournament and beating Yuciapa in the championship 1-0.

I think that game was a great game for our team to work together and maintain composure and keep working one out at a time.

Once we came back from the TOC in Bullhead, we played a home game against Los Alamitos and it was a really close game. We scored our game-winning run in the bottom of the 7th inning with two outs.

I think that this game showed our team that we will always fight until the end and that we will always have to stay focused and play together the entire game. It taught us to never let up.

We finished out this past weekend in the Best of the West tournament where we once again claimed the championship with a 1-0 win in the semis against Saugus and a 2-0 win in the finals to beat Pacifica.

Being that I have travel ball teammates on both teams, it made those games even more exciting because we got to compete against the girls who usually stand with us on the field and not against us.

It was really weird having to pitch against Mariah Lopez on Saugus because I am so used to pitching with her on the OC Batbusters – Haning/Stith team and supporting her throughout the entire game so having us pitch against each other made it a really interest game to watch.

Mariah remained strong the entire game and gave our team a true “run for our money!” I cannot wait until we are on the same team again this summer.

Overall, these past couple of weeks have had our team fighting to compete and challenging ourselves to win. We know we have a huge target on our backs because of where we are ranked both state wise and nationally; however, we will continue to play as we always do.

No matter where we are ranked, we will play as a team and fight every game. My teammate, Alyssa Palomino, and I have a motto for this year : “Perfect Effort” and I intend to give that every game for the rest of this season.

As our team says, “Now is the time to go to WAR!”

Taylor