Boys’ Athlete of the Year: Aragon’s Cam Grant

Grant’s prolific exploits on the gridiron and diamond, though, were more than enough to put him over the top as the Daily Journal Boys’ Athlete of the Year.

“I felt like I performed at the top of my ability,” Grant said. “I feel like this was definitely my peak year, and I’ll try to continue that next season.”

Continued success would be good news for Aragon, and bad news for the rest of the Central Coast Section. As an outside linebacker for the football team, Grant was among the CCS sack leaders, tying for third in the section with 12 sacks on the year. As a middle-of-the-order presence for the baseball team, he was one of just eight players in the CCS to reach the 40-hit plateau, ranking seventh in the section with exactly 40 hits.

While three-sport athletes are something of a dying breed, Grant has received nothing but encouragement in this direction from Aragon football head coach Steve Sell. Even with Grant missing summer football workouts due to playing travel ball with GamePrep Baseball Academy, the variety of sports keeps his prized pass rusher balanced, Sell said.

“All power to him,” Sell said. “I knew he was going to be doing this during the summer and I support him 100 percent. … If anything, I think it helps because then he comes to football refreshed, excited to do it.”

And the results are smashing. Grant is more than just a defensive football star. As a two-way standout, he has proven a valued component to Aragon’s leading rusher, junior Paul Lautaimi.

The Dons reached the CCS Division II playoffs — where they would earn their first postseason victory since 2012 — behind a vaunted rushing attack that totaled 2,662 ground yards on the year.

Lautaimi led the PAL Bay Division with 1,609 rushing yards, but Grant — who, Sell said, at times looked like Jerome Bettis blasting out of the backfield — ranked seventh in the Bay with 511 yards. And the tandem accounted for a majority of Aragon’s scores, with Lautaimi rushing for 15 touchdowns, while Grant rushed for 11.

“If we didn’t need him on defense, he would be one of the most dominant running backs in the area,” Sell said. “But we have [Lautaimi], so we can rest [Grant] more for defense.”

Sack monster

With Aragon outscoring opponents 332-217 in 2017, Grant’s defense was certainly a difference maker. Having played varsity football since midway through his freshman season, Grant played out of position as a sophomore, converting to inside linebacker in 2016 to compensate for a brash of injuries. This year, he moved back to outside linebacker where he became a menacing sack monster.

“He’s a born pass rusher,” Sell said. “He can do other stuff obviously. We’ve had kids that were a hair stronger than him, and a hair quicker than him, but weren’t good pass rushers. … You can either hit or your can’t.”

Grant’s football season started with a flourish, as he produced two critical defensive plays in Aragon’s opener, a 30-27 non-league win over Aptos. In the first half, he produced the only pick-6 of his varsity career to date, reading a middle screen to bat a lob pass into the air, come up with it, and dance around the edge for the touchdown.

“It was probably the sickest play I’ve ever been involved in,” Grant said.

Aragon took a 21-7 lead into halftime, but had to hold off a late Aptos surge. With the Dons holding a slight 28-27 lead inside the final minute, Grant produced his first sack of the season, in the opponent’s end zone for a safety, to seal the win.

It was the first of many wins for an Aragon team that posted a 10-2 overall record.

“Going in before the summer, looking at the talent we had I really thought we were going to go far,” Grant said.

Hit machine

In each of Grant’s first two seasons of varsity baseball, he hit above the .300 mark. Those numbers pale in comparison to his 2017 campaign, as Grant not only captured the PAL Ocean Division batting crown with a .482 batting average, he tabbed the best average throughout all three PAL divisions.

In doing so, Grant was a picture of consistency. In Aragon’s second game of the year, a non-league loss to Palo Alto, he went 0 for 3. It would be the only game all season he failed to record a hit. The right-handed hitting junior hit safely in 22 of Aragon’s 23 games, and ended the year on a 21-game hitting streak.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a kid that was that good,” Aragon baseball manager Lenny Souza said. “The year that Cam had was unbelievable.”

That’s quite an evaluation, seeing as one of Souza’s former players — St. Louis Cardinals reliever Sam Tuivailala — is currently in the big leagues. And what Grant achieved in totaling 40 hits is something that has not been done at Aragon since Tuivailala’s junior year of 2009.

In that 2009 season, Alex Sortwell paced the Dons with 45 hits, Nick Franquez ranked second with 44 and Tuivailala added 42. Since bat regulations, and the inception of safer composite bats, changed the game going into the 2011 season, hitting at the amateur level has become a more challenging skill.

“He had the best year at Aragon I’ve ever seen any kid have,” Souza said.

The groundwork for Grant’s breakout junior year took place the previous season, while the corner outfielder was working through an extended slump. At the midpoint of the season, he endured a two-week stretch where he didn’t record a hit, going 0 for 18 over a six-game span.

That’s when Souza pointed out something about Grant’s power approach during batting practice.

“You know Cam,” Souza recalls saying, “you don’t have to hit them over the building (beyond the left-field wall).”

From there, Grant readjusted his batting stance, and subtracted from a mighty leg kick he developed growing up playing home run derby during backyard Wiffle ball games at his grandparents’ house with his older brother Devin and his younger sister Megan.

Since breaking out of that slump, Grant has posted a batting average — over the last eight games of his sophomore year through the entirety of his junior year — of .500 (50 for 100). And the power numbers were still prevalent this season, as he ran away with the team triple crown, adding five home runs and 20 RBIs.

“When I get in a slump I try not to get frustrated with myself,” Grant said. “I just try to stay composed. I just get back into the cage and try to figure things out and … I guess it works.”