Ava Arce spent much of the spring imposing her brutish will on what was a conga line of overmatched pitchers sprinkled around the Big West Conference. Kathryn Hosch spent much of her spring imposing her understated, but firm, will on a group of talented, but largely untested golfers.
Both Arce, the Big West Softball Field Player of the Year, and Hosch, Cal State Fullerton’s women’s golf coach, could go lightly on the imposition part of the equation because the talent was there for all to see and admire. When you have Arce’s raw power and incandescent skill set, or when you have the peanut-butter-and-jelly chemistry and clutch abilities of Hosch’s team, you do not need to go to the whip.
Baseball coach Jason Dietrich and men’s golf coach Jason Drotter did not have that luxury. Their will imposition left nothing to the imagination, taking on a Darwinian quality that wouldn’t be out of place at an SEC or Big Ten program. After last year’s collapse, Dietrich invited a good portion of his team to investigate other programs. Drotter, meanwhile, put his golfers through a boot camp featuring 10-mile runs and obstacle courses, a boot camp brought to you by CSUF’s ROTC program with the goal of building mental toughness.
It worked.
The Titans’ men’s golf team finished second in the Big West, which was better than Drotter expected after CSUF finished 14th out of 15 in an early March tournament. And the Titans’ baseball team — the Ferrari of the athletic department’s program and the primary athletic focus and concern of CSUF alums across the country — rebounded nicely from that nightmarish 2024 to make the Big West’s inaugural postseason tournament, finishing third with a 19-11 conference record.
Whatever imposition of will Drotter and Dietrich employed squeezed every ounce of talent out of the talent at their disposal. Drotter coached up freshman Will Tanaka and junior Giacomo Comerio to top-five finishes at the Big West Tournament, their best finishes of the season.
Dietrich brought out the best in senior shortstop Maddox Latta, who was named Big West Defensive Player of the Year after leading the Titans with a .362 average, .486 on-base percentage, .503 slugging percentage and .989 OPS to go with a .977 fielding percentage. Latta was one of three Titans earning First-Team All-Conference honors, along with third baseman and Big West Freshman of the Year Carter Johnstone (.341, 47 runs, 40 RBIs) and sophomore closer Andrew Wright (1.59 ERA, 10 saves).
But back to Arce, who put together one of the most complete and dominant softball seasons in program history. She pounded 12 home runs, two shy of Hawaii’s Jamie McGaughey’s 14, which denied Arce the Big West Triple Crown. She led the conference in average (.405), RBI (63), hits (68), slugging (.690) and total bases (116). She finished second in home runs and OPS (1.121).
Arce’s 63 RBIs broke Jenny Topping’s 24-year-old mark of 59 — one of the most cherished records in the storied history of the program. She eclipsed the mark with a two-run, go-ahead homer on May 3 against Cal State Bakersfield.
Arce’s imposition of her will led the Titans to their second consecutive regular season conference title and an unprecedented haul of postseason honors. She was one of 18 players or coaches earning All-Conference honors. CSUF swept both Freshman Field Player of the Year (Nataly Lozano) and Freshman Pitcher of the Year (Eva Hurtado).
It also brought first-year head coach Gina Oaks Garcia Big West Coach of the Year accolades, a no-brainer considering the Titans went 37-15 overall and 22-5 in conference. Oaks Garcia became the fourth coach in program history to earn the honor, and she has a serendipitous tie to the other three. Judi Garman, who started the chain in 1981, recruited Oaks Garcia from Rancho Cucamonga High to CSUF. Michelle Gromacki, who coached Oaks Garcia, received the honor twice, and Kelly Ford, who brought Oaks Garcia back to CSUF last year, won the award five times, the last in 2022.
That brings us to Hosch, who won her first Big West Coach of the Year for guiding the Titans to waters heretofore uncharted. Not only did CSUF win its first Big West Women’s Golf Championship, but it finished fifth in the NCAA West Regionals to qualify for the NCAA Championships for the first time. It was the first time a No. 10 seed emerged from the regionals to claim a chair at the nationals, and the Titans pulled it off with a final-day flurry that edged Auburn by a stroke for the fifth and final spot.
That highlighted a season that featured four individual tournament victories, two team titles and the crowning of Kaitlyn Zermeno Smith as the Big West Golfer of the Year, following this year’s conference runner-up, Davina Xanh, who won that honor in 2024.
When it came to imposing will on the track, the Titans’ usual complement of sprinters did what they usually do under sixth-year coach Marques Barosso — win races and break records. The Titans’ men’s track and field team finished second after winning conference titles in the 4-by-100-meter relay team and the 4-by-400 relay team, along with Abel Jordan winning the 110 hurdles, Isaiah Emerson winning the 400 and Hawkin Miller capturing the shot put.
The CSUF women, who finished sixth, won the 4-by-100 relay, along with Brooklyn Davis winning the 100.
Amid all of that will imposition happening on the field, track and course, the Titans made news off the field, announcing the hiring of two new coaches: John Bonner takes over the women’s basketball program and Nicky Cannon returns to helm the women’s volleyball team.
Bonner takes over from Jeff Harada, who did not have his contract renewed after a 7-23 season. The Titans poached him from Cal State Dominguez Hills, where Bonner spent the last nine seasons transforming the Toros into one of the premier Division II programs in the country.
This past season, the Toros were 36-2, losing to Grand Valley State in the national championship game. That marked the second time Bonner and the Toros reached the NCAA Division II Elite Eight, joining a 31-3 season in 2022-23. He took CSUDH to five postseason appearances, earned CCAA Coach of the Year twice and compiled a 127-82 record in his nine seasons.
Cannon served as an assistant coach to Ashley Preston in 2019 and 2020 and to Nicole Polster in 2021, coaching defense, outside hitters and overseeing recruiting. She spent the past three years at UC Riverside, where she led the Highlanders to their first 10-win season since 2017 last year.
When Cannon was at CSUF, she instituted a defensive mindset that not only produced one of the region’s best liberos in Savanha Costello (5.31 digs per set) but put the 2019 Titans among the nation’s top-20 defenses with 17.44 digs per set. Cannon also coached freshman Julia Crawford to the most kills (368) and total points (398.5) by a Titan player since 2014.
We’ll see next season how Bonner and Cannon impose their will on two programs displaying recent struggles that left nothing to the imagination.