Daily Journal Softball Player of the Year: Aragon’s Taylor Workman

“Once in a lifetime generational player,” Grant said of her younger Aragon alumna. “She just happens to go to Aragon as well. She’s just like me. A hard worker ... and really humble too.”

Sure, Grant seemed like an impossible act to follow. Somehow, Workman, who just recently finished her junior year at Aragon, has managed to do it.

Grant, a more prolific power hitter, posted a .535 batting average in her prep career. Workman, through three varsity seasons, owns a .613 career average. And while Grant moved to the right field in college, and is now pivoting between third base and the outfield as a professional rookie with the Portland Cascade, Workman — an NCAA Division I commit to Clemson University — is looking to stay at shortstop longterm.

“[Workman] is the best player I’ve ever coached just all-around,” Aragon head coach Liz Roscoe said. “I feel fortunate just to have watched her. ... Megan is a great player. I’m not taking anything away from her at all. It’s just this kid is the whole package.”

The 2026 Peninsula Athletic League Bay Division Player of the Year, who also captured the overall PAL batting crown with a .692 batting average, Workman now has something else in common with Grant in garnering Daily Journal Softball Player of the Year honors.

The connection between Workman and Grant runs deeper than Aragon. Both are products of the same travel softball organization, San Mateo-based Warrior Academy. In fact, Grant was the first player to whom Workman was introduced during tryouts for the prestigious softball club when she was 11.

The tryout was at San Mateo High School, where Warrior founder Ray McDonald made the introduction in the first-base dugout. Workman quickly enlisted with the club, and, her first day at the Warriors’ old batting cages on South Amphlett Blvd., she was paired in the cages with Grant, where she got to witness the then-Aragon senior’s legendary work ethic up close.

“Honestly, I was so shocked,” Workman said. “I’d never seen anybody so focused and I was just blown away.”

The impression Grant left on Workman through her first school year with the Warriors in 2021-22 was indelible. But Workman was certainly on her way to becoming her own player.

Grant has developed into one of the best pure power hitters the game has ever seen, setting the single-season NCAA Division I mark with 42 homers this season as a senior at UCLA. But Workman is on the road to perhaps developing into the better all-around hitter.

Whereas Grant is emerging as the modern-day Babe Ruth of Athletes Unlimited Softball League — she currently has six home runs with the Cascade, just two away from reaching 50 total homers on the year — Workman compares more to the Ted Williams type. Can she hit for power? Yes, absolutely. But her balanced swing is more tooled for average.

“She’s just very confident and just goes in — sometimes she’s looking for the long ball and sometimes she just punches it in to get on,” Roscoe said. “And she knows what she’s doing when she gets on.”

And Workman’s pre-pitch routine is diametrically opposed to Grant’s.

Both are left-handed hitters, but that’s where the similarity ends. Grant is a spectacle when she bats, taking a moment before every pitch to focus inward, stepping out of the box, closing her eyes and visualizing the bat contacting the ball before looking back toward the pitcher and engaging for the next pitch. Workman, however, never takes her eyes off the pitcher throughout an at-bat, even between pitches.

“For me, I don’t really focus as much on me as I do on the pitcher,” Workman said. “So, I just try to never break eye contact with the pitcher. ... That’s really important for me because it gets me focussed on that competitive mindset. So, that’s important to me, because it’s like her versus me — like nothing else matters.”

Workman’s performance speaks for itself. She slashed .692/.770/1.231 this season, leading the Dons with seven home runs, while her average was second overall in the Central Coast Section, tied for 23rd throughout California, and ranked top 100 nationally, tied for 96th.

And as Workman went, so did the Dons. Aragon coming off a humbling 2025 season. After capturing the CCS Division IV championship in 2024, the Dons missed the playoff entirely last season. This year, with three weeks to go in the regular season, was on the cusp in an ultra-competitive PAL Bay Division, holding on with a 5-4 record with five games to go, in third place with three teams behind them in striking distance.

Aragon finished the regular season on a tear, winning five straight to lock up third place in the PAL Bay and earn an automatic bid to the CCS playoffs. Workman went 10 for 13 in those games.

“Our goal was actually to just qual for CCS this year because we didn’t last year,” Workman said. “So, that run at the end of the year wasn’t something we were explicitly trying for ... but it was a pleasant surprise, and just showed how much better our team got over the course of the season.”