Oakdale’s three Everett sisters making impact for team with hopes of playoff success
Delainey started, Raegen and Briley followed, and years later, it has become a family reunion on the Oakdale High softball team.
It is normal for two siblings to play on the same high school team, but three is almost unheard of. The Everett sisters are playing on the same team for the first time in their lives and enjoying every minute of it.
Delainey is the veteran senior pitcher every team needs. She will play at Mississippi State next season. Raegen, a junior, complements her sister well in the circle as the team’s No. 2 pitcher and has proved to be one of the team’s power hitters. And Briley, a freshman, has improved with every game she has played.
The girls have another sister, Saige, who is in middle school and will attend Oakdale when her time comes.
The three older sisters are members of an Oakdale team that has hopes of a deep playoff run. The Mustangs finished second in the Valley Oak League and, with a 19-7 overall record, earned a No. 5 seed in the Sac-Joaquin Section Division III playoffs. The Mustangs won their first-round game 9-1 against No. 12 El Capitan.
“Any game and any pitch could be our last one,” Delainey said. “Our goal is to make it pretty far, if not win the whole thing. There’s a lot of competition within our team, which is a good thing. We all want to be out there, we all want to participate and we all want to take a win. That’s what we strive to do every day.”
Raegen and Delainey have been teammates before. It started with soccer.
They played on the same travel teams in youth soccer and softball, but when they had to pick a path at around 10 years old, softball became their priority.
“During summer, we were traveling, and then it came to the point where soccer and softball were on the same weekend,” Delainey said. “We had to choose, and being a pitcher, you’re the main piece, so we had to take a step back from soccer and I don’t regret it to this day.”
While being teammates with her sister was part of the appeal of playing only softball, Raegen’s choice was also calculated.
“Half of it was I wanted to follow her lead. But I also learned quickly that softball could get us into college and set our futures up, and then we began playing travel every summer, every weekend, and we fell in love with the competitive game and never looked back from that.”
They played travel ball together as young athletes, and last year played their first full season together as Mustangs.
Both pitch for Oakdale and helped lead the team to a 26-3-1 record and a trip to the Sac-Joaquin Section Division III semifinals in 2022. Delainey as a junior finished with a 13-2 record and an impressive 0.47 ERA. In her sophomore season, Raegen went a perfect 9-0 with a 0.99 ERA.
This season, Delainey boasts an 11-3 record in 18 appearances and Raegen is 3-1 in 14 appearances. They hope to lead the Mustangs deep into the playoffs.
For Briley, softball almost always was the sport.
She started playing soccer at the rec level at a young age but quickly decided playing the same sport as her two older sisters was the path for her.
“I just kind of followed in their footsteps,” she said. “I wanted to do what they were doing and then fell in love with it and that’s all I wanted to do since.”
Briley, the only freshman on the ultracompetitive varsity team, starts in left field and in most games bats second. She boasts a .333 batting average with two doubles, a triple and has eight RBIs. She has played in 25 games this season.
“It’s such an honor just to be able to play behind them and on the same field as them,” she said. “It’s always been a dream since I was little watching them and then falling in love with it as well. They know they can trust me because we’ve been together our whole lives and played the same game.”
The home workouts are always competitive.
They constantly are comparing who can do the most pull-ups or who can hold the box squat the longest, and that competitive nature carries onto the field. They hold one another accountable and make sure they are giving 100% effort no matter the circumstances.
When they are around their teammates, their attention to detail helps make a team full of great softball players even better.
“All the girls (on Oakdale’s roster) are committed or they would not be where they are,” said Mustangs coach Larry Loger. “But they see that from one family and we’re a softball family so it definitely carries through the whole group.”
How’s their relationship off the field?
“We’ll fight more about clothing than about softball, honestly,” Delainey said. “At home, we all work out, we all sleep in the same house, so it’s kind of hard not to love each other at the end of the day just because of all the things that we go through. We’re all so different … but we all know that we’re good and we push each other to our limits. We aren’t going to put each other in a position to jeopardize our body or mental stability.”
Dominant in their playoff opener
The two older sisters combined for the win in the fifth seeded Mustangs’ playoff opener against No. 12 El Capitan Tuesday.
Delainey started, pitching five innings with 12 strikeouts. She allowed just two hits and an earned run. Raegen finished the game, striking out all six batters she faced in the game’s final two innings to put the seal on a 9-1 win.
Both are versatile and have the ability to play anywhere on the field during travel ball. But at Oakdale, when Delainey pitches, Raegen plays first base, and vice versa.
“It’s always been our goal to play together, especially with me going to college so far away,” Delainey said. “She usually plays middle infield on our travel team, but here it’s just easier when she’s at first and we’ve got a good infield to hold it down. First is where we need her in high school, so that’s where we put her.”
Raegen added: “I try to be there for her when she needs help, like she is for me when I need help. We’re blood, so we know exactly what each other’s strengths and weaknesses are. … When you get deep into games and you have a lot of games per week, you have to rely on each other and we’ve learned to trust each other and become persistent with being there for each other.”
The Mustangs scored four runs in the first three innings and broke the game open with a five-run bottom of the sixth.
With Madison Bohannon, Bailey Peterson and Jayci Volonte all on base in the sixth inning, Briley was hit by a pitch, scoring Bohannon from third for the Mustangs’ sixth run. Two batters later, Delainey lined a bases-clearing double to right field, scoring Peterson, Volonte and her younger sister for three of her game-high four RBIs.
In their 10-1 quarterfinal win over Pioneer Thursday, Presley Barnes drove in a team-high five runs, hit a home run and had a pair of singles.
Volonte, Peterson and the three Everett sisters added two hits apiece as the team combined for 19 hits to beat the fourth-seeded Patriots.
The Mustangs advance to the Division III semifinals Tuesday, May 23, where they will play Central Catholic for the second time in two years.
This story was originally published May 18, 2023 at 8:49 AM.
