Kendra Salangsang of San Lorenzo Valley High School has been named Pitcher of the Year by Maxine Richards, wife of the late Santa Cruz County softball icon Wayne Richards.
“She’s an outstanding young lady,” Maxine Richards said.
Salangsang, a 16-year-old junior during the 2010 high school softball season, was the Cougars’ No. 1 starting pitcher and piled up 183 strikeouts and a 15-7 record. Voted player of the year in the Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League, she led the Cougars into the Central Coast Section playoffs and will anchor the pitching staff in 2011.
This summer, Salangsang is playing on a San Jose traveling team, the Inferno. She’s one of three pitchers on the squad.
“We have tournaments every weekend, with a couple of weekends off (during the summer),” she said.
Salangsang, who has been pitching since she was 9, is a product of San Lorenzo Valley-based team Mountain Dream. She throws five pitches — a fastball, change-up, rise, drop and curveball — but says the rise and drop balls are her best.
Salangsang hopes to play softball in college and may study biology. But for now, she’s just trying to improve on the success she’s already had.
“When you put in a lot of hard work, you’re going to be successful,” she said. “But loving it, that’s part of it, too.”
Joanna Coker, another San Lorenzo Valley student, was awarded the Wayne Richards Memorial Scholarship for her efforts in the classroom.
Richards died in 1998. He coached and was athletic director at San Lorenzo Valley High for nearly three decades. The Wayne Richards Memorial Scholarship was set up in his honor.
