Daily Journal Girls’ Athlete of the Year: Carlmont’s Emerson Barajas

“I did gymnastics until freshman year, about 10 years. It was very time consuming,” Barajas said. “When I came into high school, my mind was more set on gymnastics and then I fell out of love with gymnastics.

“And I wanted to branch out and see the high school experience.”

Barajas ended up having quite the experience. She went out for basketball and was talked into running track her freshman year, before adding flag football to the mix her sophomore year.

Two years later, the recently-graduated Barajas is the San Mateo Daily Journal’s Girls’ Athlete of the Year. She was a first-team, all-Bay Division performer on the football field, in the mix for Defender of the Year honors that eventually went to Burlingame’s Haleh Ansari. The Scots finished second in the Peninsula Athletic League’s Bay Division and qualified for the first-ever Central Coast Section Open Division bracket.

She then transitioned to the basketball court, earning first-team, all-Bay Division honors before taking the track. There she was an all-PAL performer in four events — winning PAL titles in the long jump and 100 hurdles, and finishing second in the high jump and 4x100 relay. She finished on the podium in all four events at the Central Coast Section championships and competed in the CIF State Championship long jump trials, just missing qualifying for the finals.

“Coming from gymnastics, I’ve always been an individual sports person and track is definitely an individual sport,” Barajas said. “But I do like team sports and it is fun, so I figured I might as well try it.”

An all-around athlete

Barajas said her mom made her try out for the basketball team and Carlmont varsity girls’ basketball coach Richard Stephens is glad she did. So does the track team, as her freshman basketball coach was also a track coach and encouraged her to go out for track her freshman year.

But that was after she earned a playoff promotion to the varsity basketball team her freshman year and she never played another JV game again.

Her stats don’t necessarily back that up, however. This past year, her senior year, she averaged 4.5 points and 5.4 rebounds per game. But what she provided the Scots didn’t necessarily show up in the box score.

Unless you were looking at the opposing team’s top scorer’s numbers.

“When she was a freshman, she was athletic and tough, but not much of a basketball player,” Stephens said. “We brought her up for CCS (her freshman year) and from then on, she just developed into one of the top defensive players I’ve ever coached. Certainly in the top two or three. She is a tenacious defender and a great rebounder.

“We would put her on, regardless of the position, the other team’s best player. We would design our defense around her, taking out one kid and then figuring out what to do with the others.”

In addition to her tenaciousness, one of Barajas’ biggest attributes is her self awareness. She knew she was not a skillful on the basketball court as a some of her teammates, but she found her role and she excelled at it.

“Because I hadn’t played so much basketball, I couldn’t dribble and shoot as well as the rest of the girls,” Barajas said. “So I just had to find my specialty. As long as you can help the team and bring it to the table, that’s the most important.

“People knew defense is my specialty, so I had that motivation.”

To drive home that point, Stephens said Bajaras, despite being a defensive specialist, earned all-tournament honors in two different early-season tournaments.

“If you score 20 points per game, you get all-tournament. She got all-tournament where she got five points a game,” Stephens said. “We certainly recognize how important defensive rebounding is. If you can play your position and rebound, you can play.

“You have to impact the game in a positive way and she always impacted the game in a positive way.”

Stopper on the football field

Barajas took that defensive mentality to the football field as she joined the flag football program during the first-ever season in 2023. By the time she finished her senior season this past fall, she was one of the best defenders in the league as a linebacker/defensive back.

“She became a pillar on the team. Whatever side she was on, she was taking care of it. We didn’t have to worry about it,” said Oscar Fabic, Carlmont’s head flag football coach.

Like Stephens did on the basketball court, Fabic did on the football field — used Barajas to lock down opposing offenses.

“She’s was like (NFL Hall of Famer) Patrick Willis or (current San Francisco 49ers linebacker) Fred Warner. … She locked down that one side, and with Amina (Mohammed) on the other side, it made it hard (for opposing teams) to move the ball.”

Barajas finished her senior year with 108 flag pulls on 125 attempts, had five tackles for loss and three quarterback pressures.

But where she really excelled was in pass defense. In addition to intercepting four passes, she broke up 16 other passes while committing only one penalty on defense all season.

“Defense doesn’t get the glitz and glamor. Without it, there is a huge shift (in the game),” Barajas said. “It was a position I fit well in.”

Barajas goes on the offensive

But when Barajas traded in her football cleats and basketball high tops for track spikes, she finally got to go on the offensive and it was on the track where Barajas really excelled. So much so that she will be competing in track at Chapman University.

To think what she might have accomplished if she found her groove early. As a freshman and sophomore, she was mostly a sprinter and hurdler, but was participating in a lot of other events as well.

Her junior year, she added high jump and this year she took on the long jump — an event she had her most success.

“I wanted to experiment with other events to see how that would go,” Barajas said.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

Barajas ran the 100 hurdles just five times this season. She won the PAL championship with a time of 15.68 — her first sub-16 time of the season. She followed that with with a 15.50 in the CCS trials and finished sixth in the CCS finals with a personal record of 15.32.

She was a core member of the 4x100 relay, as the group of Vivian Ivanov, Kiana Chen, Samantha Tow, Mia Fitterer and Sophie Green won the race five times throughout the season. They broke the 50-second mark with a 48.91 April 15 and ultimately finished third at CCS with a season-best time of 48.59.

Barajas proved to adept at high jump, finishing second in the PAL championships both her junior and senior years and settled for fourth place at CCS this season.

But all that pales in comparison to what Barajas accomplished in long jump. Considering it was just her first season makes her performance even more amazing. She jumped 17 feet, 3 1/4 inches in her first competitive long jump, taking second in a PAL tri-meet March 4. She bettered that with a 17-6 effort April 22 and then blew everyone away with a new PAL record of 18-1 1/2 at the PAL championships — a mark that had stood since 2005.

She added another three-quarters of inch to finish third at CCS with a mark of 18-2 and concluded her season at the CIF State Track Meet trials, matching her PAL record distance.

“I thought it would be something I was decent at, but not super great,” Barajas said. “But I got progressively better during the season.”

The same could said of Barajas’ high school athletic career — one that kept progressing.