(Aliso Viejo, CA) The Great Southwest Athletic Conference announced the winners of several season awards in softball Monday afternoon, as five members of the Park University Gilbert Softball team took several distinguished awards home.
The GSAC voted Buccaneers head coach TJ Stower as the 2025 Coach of the Year, named center fielder Ledezma Romero to the 2025 GSAC Gold Glove team, and named three players to the All-Conference team: first baseman Noelle Gumm, third baseman Ileana Rivera, and designated player Alejandra Castro.
These honors come shortly after Park-Gilbert, in its first season as members of the conference, secured a 17-win season and the No. 4 seed in the 2025 GSAC Championships.
Stower was hired to lead the Buccaneers program back in July of 2024. In his first season at the helm, Stower took a Bucs roster lacking returning starters and led them back to the postseason; courtesy of a pair of season sweeps over conference rivals Benedictine Mesa and OUAZ. In 2025, the Bucs broke multiple single-game and single-season records. Park-Gilbert shattered the single-season home run record with 27 on the year. Five of those came in one game against BENU on March 22, a new single-game home run record. As they head into the GSAC Championships with a cumulative batting average of .340, third-highest in the conference, the Bucs are on track to break the university’s single-season batting average record of .313 set in 2020.
Representing two of the infielders on the 2025 All-GSAC team are Ileana Rivera and Noelle Gumm, while Alejandra Castro took home the honors as the lone designated player on the all-conference squad.
Rivera, the third baseman from Long Beach, Calif., was a two-time GSAC Softball Player of the Week winner with a .440 batting average and seven home runs in 2025; one shy of breaking the Park-Gilbert individual single-season record. She’s also just one of two players in the GSAC to have more than one game with multiple home runs, as Rivera homered twice against Nelson on Feb. 7, and twice against Simpson on March 18.
Gumm, the first baseman from Gilbert, Ariz., batted .414 in 2025 as Park-Gilbert’s leadoff hitter and was just one of three Buccaneers to record at least four home runs; just one of 10 players in the GSAC to achieve that feat. She started all 36 games, holding the highest team hit total with 48 and second-highest OPS with 1.108. Gumm also became the first player in the history of Park-Gilbert softball to hit leadoff homers in back-to-back days; on April 4th and April 5th in the Bucs’ series against the NAIA’s No. 18 ranked Hope International University.
Castro, the DP from Tucson, Ariz., finished the regular season top-3 in batting average, hits, RBIs, total bases, OPS, and slugging percentage for the Bucs. She batted .420 on the year, posting 42 hits, 30 RBIs, 66 total bases, a 1.099 OPS and a .660% slugging percentage. Castro’s slugging percentage was the fifth-highest in the GSAC this season.
The lone recipient from Park-Gilbert, for the 2025 GSAC Gold Glove team, was center fielder Ledezma Romero. Romero, a senior from Surprise, Ariz., posted a .979 fielding percentage, putting out 87 of 94 chances. Her fielding percentage and putout total were good for top-12 in the GSAC this season.
The Buccaneers return to the field this Tuesday, April 29 at 3:00 p.m. MST, as they face the GSAC’s regular season champion Hope International in the first round of the conference championships; hosted by Embry-Riddle in Prescott, Ariz. Information on streaming, stats, tickets, and more can be found on the Bucs’ softball schedule located on the Park-Gilbert athletics website.
Press Release courtesy of Park University Athletics – Garrett Campbell
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