Ian Josephson got a taste of living the dream his last week as a Serra Padre.
With the Padres advancing to the CIF Northern California Division I playoffs for the first time in history, Josephson got to focus exclusively on playing baseball. The Serra seniors graduated three days before the Nor Cal opener — on the same day the Padres captured the Central Coast Section Division I championship, their first CCS title since 2009 — so Josephson spent the week eating, sleeping and thinking nothing but baseball.
“Once the Nor Cal tournament started, I was already graduated, so I didn’t have any school to worry about,” Josephson said. “And obviously, we had been playing for so long … I was up there not even thinking, just up there and reacting … to the point where it almost didn’t matter what pitch was coming.”
Living the dream seems to jive with Josephson, as the left-handed hitting senior went 7 for 14 in the three-game Nor Cal tournament, including the first back-to-back three-hit games of his varsity career in wins over College Park-Pleasant Hill and Los Gatos.
Not that multi-hit games were an anomaly for the first-team All-West Catholic Athletic League shortstop, who ranked second in the WCAL with a .483 average. It was his 1-for-3 performance in the Nor Cal finals at De La Salle-Concord that made history, though, as his third-inning single to left field marked his 55th hit of the year, breaking Serra’s all-time single-season record of 54 previously held by Brandon Ramsey.
Now, Josephson adds another distinction to his impressive baseball resume, as he has been named the Daily Journal Baseball Player of the Year.
“It was as consistent of a high-level performance that I’ve seen,” Padres manager Mat Keplinger said of Josephson’s senior season. “He was so good from start to finish. There was zero drop-off in his game. He was able to play with a really high motor and his tank was full just every day.”
Keplinger moved Josephson to the leadoff spot to start the season, a strategy to get his most projectable bat the most number of at-bats possible. This came as a surprise to Josephson, who had previously only ever been a middle-of-the-0rder hitter.
“Yeah, I never hit leadoff in my life before,” Josephson said. “I had never even done that in scrimmages or anything. … I didn’t even know what that was supposed to look like.”
It looked legit, and not just because he led the Padres with 25 stolen bases.
Through Serra’s non-league slate to start the season, Josephson hit safely in seven of eight games, with five multi-hit performances. And while the Padres went on to open the season with 10 straight wins, there was some panic in the ranks after the first two games of the year, when the team compiled just 10 hits in two wins over Menlo School and Sacred Heart Prep.
“Really early on, I honestly had some doubts,” Josephson said.
Those doubts were soon allayed as Serra went on to a historic season. The Padres earned their first WCAL regular-season championship since 2021, and hit .311 as a team doing it. The driving force was Josephson, who didn’t miss a game despite suffering a hamstring injury less than halfway through the year.
Less than a week after his hamstring lit up while running to first base in a game against St. Ignatius, Serra traveled for its annual spring break sojourn to Rocklin for the Boras Baseball Classic. Keplinger initially wanted to sit his star player to rest the hamstring. Josephson wouldn’t hear of it.
“That was never really an option,” Josephson said. “So, we did what we could with in-season rehab but it was never really a hundred percent.”
It wasn’t until Josephson took a month off after the season that his hamstring was back to 100%. By then, he had a dream season to look back on, defined by his determination to stay on the field.
“There was no taking him off the field,” Keplinger said. “He was an iron-man for us.”
Not that the Padres’ winning ways had anything to do with motivating him. Josephson, win or lose, simply wanted to play ball.
“I don’t think it really mattered if we were 0-31 or 31-0 … I wanted to be out there with the guys and playing my last season there,” Josephson said.
That totally tracks with Josephson’s intensive sports lifestyle. When he’s not playing baseball, he’s watching it, mostly college baseball on ESPN+; or playing video games, mainly MLB The Show, with teammates past and present.
On the field, though, he’s all business with a hit tool that won’t quit, and a defensive upside that has Keplinger believing Josephson will eventually play shortstop at the next level. He is heading to Saint Mary’s College in the fall, where he will join two former Padres in pitcher Sam Kretsch and catcher Ian Armstrong. Currently, the Gaels have Jared Mettam manning shortstop, but the former Half Moon Bay standout is heading into his senior year.
“I really do think he has a chance to play shortstop at the next level,” Keplinger said. “I think he’s going to be someone who just continues to surprise people.”
While Keplinger raves about Josephson’s physical tools, it’s the intangibles that grade out above the rest.
“Just the epitome of a selfless leader from start to finish,” Keplinger said. “They don’t make them like that. It’s extremely rare.”
Speaking of extremely rare — recent Serra baseball CCS championships. Josephson has one of just two Serra CCS titles this century, and the program’s seventh all-time. Throughout the Padres’ Nor Cal run, however, Josephson approached it as business as usual. Even following a 5-4 loss to De La Salle in the Nor Cal finals, he was even-keeled, willing to talk cooly and candidly during a postgame interview, just as he did after wins earlier in the year.
What did illicit his excitement — much more than even the hits record — was May 31 at Excite Park in San Jose when Serra rallied for a 3-2 win over Valley Christian to claim the CCS crown. Despite being played on the same day as Serra’s graduation ceremony in San Francisco, and with Excite Ballpark located over 50 miles from Saint Mary’s Cathedral, and over 30 miles from Serra’s campus, that didn’t stop Padre Nation from turning out in droves.
And on that fateful evening, Josephson and the Padres conducted the ultimate graduation party for Serra’s class of 2025.
“To win that in front of them was just such a surreal moment,” Josephson said. “It didn’t even really set in until we got off the field and got on the bus … it was like: ‘Holy crap, we just won a CCS title!’ But just over-flooded with emotions.”