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The 2024-2025 Cal A’s-Jackson 14-Under travel team, shortly before an elimination game at the USA Softball Champion’s Cup. Jennifer Jackson is on the far left, next to younger sister Erica Jackson. On the far right are assistants Edgar Cervantes and former Artesia High player Natalie Luna. PHOTO BY LOREN KOPFF.
July 22, 2025
By Loren Kopff • @LorenKopff on X
As Jennifer Willig was building herself as a wall as Gahr High’s star catcher from 2000-2002, she had an idea that one day, she would be coaching a softball team at some level. She says she was interested in it, helping her late father, Craig Willig, coach in the Cerritos Girls Softball Association.
Now known as Jennifer Jackson, who married former John Glenn High football, boys basketball and volleyball athlete Davion Jackson in 2015, she is coaching the [Buena Park] Cal A’s-Jackson 14-Under travel softball team, which is in its first official season of existence and will be one of 156 teams in that age group in next week’s Premier Girls Fastpitch National Championships. The Cal A’s-Jackson will begin with three pool play games from the Platinum Division on Monday before moving on to the double elimination bracket. Jackson’s oldest daughter Rylee, also a catcher, is on the team and will be a freshman at Gahr next month.
“I would help [my father] coach [younger sisters] Erica and Tory’s team, and I loved it,” said Jackson. “I have always just loved being around kids. So, I kind of knew that it was something that I was definitely interested in pretty young.”
Just because her mom was a catcher at Gahr and again at Cypress College, Rylee was not influenced to be a catcher by her. She knew right away that she wanted to be a catcher, so she could follow in her mom’s footsteps.
“I would say the reason why I got into it was because of my mom, and watching college players,” said Rylee Jackson. “For example, [University of Texas catcher] Reese Atwood; I love watching her play, and she’s a big inspiration. Obviously, my mom is a big inspiration, and just by growing up and hearing all the stories about how good she was and reading old [articles in the Los Cerritos Community News].”
When Rylee began in the CGSA in February of 2016, Jackson admitted she wasn’t sure if she was ready to coach her daughter. She wanted her to be coached by someone else first, and even when she reached the 8-Under division, Jackson still didn’t coach her up-and-coming star daughter. However, she saw something at the 8-Under level that changed her mind.
“She was on a team with older girls; second-year 8-Under’s who were more advanced, and it was just a more advanced team,” recalls Jackson. “The coach had been coaching these girls for a little bit, and so they knew everything about the game as much as you can know as an eight-year-old. Rylee, coming up from T-ball, didn’t know [as much]. She didn’t know that there’s three strikes and you’re out. She didn’t know that ball four meant walk because in T-ball, they didn’t have strikeouts or walks.”
After witnessing how her daughter and the other younger ones were being coached at a young age, she decided to start her team so she could properly, as she said, ‘could be shaped and molded and taught the game. ‘ At that moment, Jennifer and her younger sister Erica, who was also a catcher at Gahr, decided to start a recreational team in 2021.
“So, we took a team in the fall and honestly, the rest is history, and we haven’t stopped coaching since,” she said. “We’ve always taken a team fall and spring, fall and spring and all-stars.”
The Jacksons returned to the CGSA early in 2022 but six months later, switched to the Cypress Girls Softball League because the former president of the CGSA didn’t want to let Rylee move up a division. Using her mother’s instinct, Jackson felt her daughter again wasn’t at the level of the girls who were in the division the former president wanted. Still, Jackson took a team that season and coached all-stars that summer before deciding to switch leagues. They were in Cypress for one year before deciding to start their own travel team.
“It was hard for me because we all grew up in CGSA, but also our dad has a field named after him [at the Cerritos Sports Complex] on Field 4,” said Jackson. “The talent isn’t there; there’s not a lot of competition. I knew Rylee was the best in Cerritos, but I wanted Rylee to go and be with girls who were better than her so that she could grow. I wanted her out of her comfort zone. You’re not growing if you’re not comfortable.”
In the late spring and early summer of 2023, while at Cypress, Jackson’s all-star team, which included seven or eight girls from the CGSA, advanced to the Western Nationals where it finished eighth out of 32 teams. It was then that Jackson knew her daughter had outgrown recreational ball, and it was time to make the transition to travel ball.
“During that whole all-star season of 2023, me and Davion were just talking about it; me and Erica thought we needed to make the move to travel. [Rylee] is ready, and she needs to grow and compete, and this is another stepping stone to grow and compete. I didn’t want her to be in recs at 14.”
Again, parents were asking Jackson that summer what she was going to do, but when they asked if she was going to start a travel team, Jackson initially said she would put Rylee on another team where she could be coached by someone else. After coaching her entire softball career, she wanted Rylee to be out of her comfort zone and really be pushed.
“She loves softball just as much as I did,” said Jackson. “She is constantly watching college games all day long. She has so much potential, and I want her to get to her best. I’m not the best coach and I don’t know it all, and I’m not too proud to say that. I never coached travel, so I was out of my comfort zone.”
That was the initial plan for Jackson, who once played for the Artesia Punishers and San Pedro Waves in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But the parents who had followed Jackson all this time persuaded her to start a travel team, which would be known as the Cal A’s-Jackson. If that wasn’t enough persuasion, Jackson received the biggest vote of confidence from Erica, who goes everywhere her older sister does.
“She’s definitely harder on me, and it pushes me to become a better player,” said Rylee Jackson. “I feel like a lot of my success is from her coaching, obviously, and my aunt coaching me too, and my dad coaching me in my other sports. Growing up, I’ve always been coached to be the best I can be more than any other player.”
The process of beginning a travel team isn’t as easy as it sounds. First, Jackson had to find an organization, which wasn’t too hard, as she knew of one from a girl she had previously coached. She ended up being the granddaughter of Tommy Parten, who was in charge of the Cal A’s-Parten.
“I had to go and create a business license because this is like a business, obviously non-profit,” Jackson remembered. “I had to open a team bank account, then came all the other stuff, like creating an Instagram profile page because you have to have all those things. In today’s travel ball world, oh, that’s huge. I went and did all that stuff, got the parents updated, and told them we were doing this.
“I think that [Tommy] has put good products out there on the field and he has a good success rate of getting these girls scholarships and teaching them all the things they need to do to get a scholarship,” she later said. “He has a wealth of knowledge. So, I just trusted him that he was going to guide us in the right direction to get us started, and he definitely has given us all the fundamentals to start this team.”
Once Jackson had established the team, she had to tackle the most critical aspect: finding a suitable playing facility. Because every city is affiliated with either a recreational team or a travel team, securing field times was impossible, as she put it. In the first year, the Cal A ‘s-Jackson practiced at Rio San Gabriel Park in Downey, then was able to gain access to the fields at San Antonio Park in Buena Park.
When the team first started, there were just nine girls, six of whom were originally from the CGSA and the other three from Cypress. Today, of the 14 girls on this season’s Cal A’s-Jackson team, four have followed Jackson since they were seven years old, playing for the CGSA. It even reached the point of the girls asking, “where are going Coach Jen, where are you going? We want to come with you.”
“It makes me feel, obviously, really good; it makes me feel like I am doing something right,” said Jackson. “I feel like they know that I’m in this for the right reasons, and they trust me. It really means everything to me. I’m so thankful for this group of girls and their parents, who have accompanied me on this entire journey. I think that without them, it might have been a little different. But I feel really grateful, and appreciated and trusted.”
The first year of the team was a learning experience as Jackson lost a few players along the way. There were two pitchers, but one of them was too busy with other obligations and had to leave the team. Another player who had been with Jackson since she was seven left to go to another team. The team did not participate in any tournaments and was relegated to playing in friendlies whenever possible.
But mostly, the team primarily focused on mechanics and fielding, the latter of which was led by Natalie Luna, an infielder who graduated from California Lutheran University in 2023 and also played at Artesia High. Luna has become the team’s fielding coach.
All the time spent working on practicing and mechanics has paid off, as the team advanced into the PGF National Championships with an amazing run in the loser’s bracket at the 14-Under Southern California National Qualifier, held from June 13 to 15 in Irvine.
The Cal A’s-Jackson fell to the [Anaheim] Firecrackers-Brashear/Meza 6-3 in the first game, then eliminated three teams on the 14th before falling to the [Lake Elsinore] West Coast Dukes-Jensen 4-3 the next morning. Although the Cal A’s-Jackson team was eliminated early Sunday morning, it earned one of the four extra berths in the Platinum Division. Of the 18 teams who lost their first game in the qualifier, Jackson’s team was the only one still alive Sunday morning.
“We worked hard; we worked very, very hard and our girls put in so much work to get us to this point here,” said Jackson. “I was 50-50; I totally believed we had the potential to qualify, but I wasn’t sure of what to expect when we came out to the tournament.”
The Cal A’s-Jackson also played in the Zoom into June showcase tournament and the USA Softball Champions Cup. Jackson said she wanted to go to the Triple Crown Sports Sparkler Tournament earlier this month, but didn’t make it.
Jackson said it’s bittersweet that her father is not here to see her take it upon herself not only to coach Rylee, but also to start a travel team.
“I know that he would be so proud of everything that we have accomplished,” said Jackson, who also played at Cypress College until her father passed away. “He was absolutely my…I looked up to him for everything in softball. He taught me all the things I know about softball before I entered travel and high school, even when I went to Cypress College. He’s definitely the one thing that’s missing. I wish more than anything that he were here. But I would say he’s had such an influence on the way that I have coached.”
Jackson says that coaching softball for all these years has forced her to step up her game on different levels. She acknowledges that it’s up to her to get the girls prepared and ready for the next step, which is high school. But she is also preparing them for college. Jackson admitted she is constantly learning because the game of softball isn’t the same as it was during her Gahr days.
Looking ahead to next season, Jackson said she would like to participate in more showcase tournaments, including the Colorado Fourth of July Sparkler Tournament. The team will also move up to the 16-Under age division and has already been playing in high school friendlies.
“I would think that we would want to qualify again [for PGF],” she added. “I think PGF is probably pretty important. But right now, we’ve actually started the recruiting process for the girls, as I now have sophomores, and the other girls are freshmen. We just want to get them started by getting familiar with the process of recruiting.
“We’ve been able to compete some; we’ve gotten our butts kicked some,” she later said. “I fully believe that if you’re playing up with girls that are better than you, it’s going to force you to grow, and it’s going to force you to play up to their level. You’re going to get better quicker, faster, and stronger playing against these girls who are that.”
Rylee leads her travel team with a blistering .491 batting average with 28 hits, 21 runs batted in, 20 runs, six doubles, and three triples and is one of two players to appear in all 26 games this summer. Jackson said that she did not have to influence her daughter to play the same position as she did when she was her age.
“Rylee is mommy’s girl through and through, and whatever mom does, she wants to do too,” said Jackson. “So, when she was little, she was like, ‘Oh, you were a catcher. I want to be a catcher. She’s [uniform] number 31; she’s been 31 since she started playing, and that was my number. She’s never been anything since then.”
Rylee says she is determined not only to live up to the standards her mom sets for her when she sets foot on the Gahr campus next month, but also to exceed them. And while it’s still early to do anything with colleges, Rylee already has her shopping list made as far as where she would like to attend.
“Since I started watching softball with my mom, we’ve always watched all the games and seeing the dynasty of [the University of] Oklahoma; leading up to it and winning their four straight national titles has shown me what greatness can come out of that,” said Rylee. “I like watching [former Norco High and Oklahoma catcher] Kinzie Hansen and all the other players. They’re all good, and I want to be one of those good players.”
In closing, Jackson said she is very grateful for this journey and is happy with the decision to start the Cal A’s-Jackson travel team. While she knows there are many really tough moments, especially with her family, which includes her son Carson (10) and daughter Peyton (4), she wouldn’t change anything because she loves the game so much.
“I truly love the game of softball, and I love being able to help these girls live out their dream and help them get better at it,” she said. “And obviously for Rylee, that’s a little more personal for me. I won’t ever show it on the field; I promise everyone that. But we work outside of the field differently.”
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