ELK GROVE, CA (MPG) - Despite interest from underclassmen, the Monterey Trail Mustangs baseball program was not able to meet the participation numbers it needed to field a varsity team.  

Monterey Trail Athletic Director David Coronado said the program tried until the last moment, which was December 2024, and in the end, there wasn’t a feasible way to field a varsity team, especially in the hyper-competitive Delta League. The program will only have a junior varsity team this year. 

“Every year, I mean, you can go through and look at the rosters every year,” Coronado said. “We battled the numbers and just tried to do everything we could to get them out there, like after school, during summers and it was a tough battle.” 

The low numbers are attributed to the lack of baseball culture at Monterey Trail, Coronado said. The COVID-19 pandemic was another contributing factor to diminished participation numbers, he added. 

According to MaxPreps, the Mustangs had just 10 players on the team last year, two of which were freshmen. That team went 12-14 for the season.

Monterey Trail is another name on the list of local schools to cancel a varsity season in the past year. 

In August 2024, both Florin and Valley high schools cancelled their football seasons, also due to low participation numbers. 

Coronado said student-athletes in the area also transfer to other schools to play in certain programs, which has hurt Monterey Trail’s baseball participation numbers and culture. 

“We understand the lack of baseball culture we have on our campus, and we do everything we can,” Coronado said. “We want kids to participate, but at some point, I think the parents, and I was one of them; my son is a senior, so it was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make, is let my kid go to another school.” 

“We’ve lost multiple kids in our area that should be at our school playing baseball that have transferred and that’s what happens, and we get killed and unfortunately, we don’t have a varsity team,” he added. 

Coronado said he hopes the Sac-Joaquin Section will change to conference models, which will allow schools like Monterey Trail to be competitive. 

“93% of these kids will never play baseball again,” Coronado said. “So that’s the number I want to impact.” 

The plan for shaping the future of Monterey Trail’s baseball culture is to keep working hard and not bother anyone by trying to recruit kids, Coronado said. 

He added the future of the varsity baseball team would be two years from now, when the current junior varsity baseball team is upperclassmen. Coronado said there are currently 10 freshmen and two sophomores on the junior varsity team. 

“We’re going to keep our kids and we’re going to coach who we got,” Coronado said. 

“If competing is what they want to do, we’re going to get kids that come into our area and stay at our school.”