Junior Alexis Topas has been swinging her bat for the Santa Maria Saints’ varsity softball team all three years of her high school career.
As a freshman, she beat out several seniors for the position of shortstop—even though she’d been playing third base prior to tryouts.
“We weren’t sure what we were going to do with her at first,” coach Matt Andree said of his now star player. “There were a couple of seniors we were looking at [for shortstop], but they just weren’t ready.”
Topas, for her part, said she was shocked by her coach’s decision.
“I thought, ‘Oh, this is a big role to fill. I don’t know if I can handle it,’” she recalled.
While Topas had to do a lot of on-the-job training, Andree said, she took each challenge in stride.
“I just did my best and kept trying to improve each time I went out on the field,” Topas added. “It took me a while to stop getting down on myself; I had to learn to pick myself up and to pick other girls up when they’re having a bad day.”
Andree was straightforward in his praise for the junior: “She’s a jack-of-all-trades girl,” he said. “She’s really matured, and she’s learned how to handle adversity and how to be a leader.”
Softball, he said, “can be a sport of failure sometimes,” so players have to learn how to shake off their mistakes and keep their heads in the game.
Topas does this by having a positive attitude and approach to the game.
“I get a lot of compliments from other coaches about her,” Andree said.
The shortstop’s talents extend beyond her glove, too: She also bats third in the team’s lineup, an enviable position for any slugger.
She said her main goal for the season is to make it to the CIF state championship.
Topas isn’t sure where she wants to go to college, but she does know she’d like to major in kinesiology.
“I’ve been in sports my whole life. I like helping people and motivating them, and [majoring in kinesiology] would be a good way to continue doing that,” she said.
This article appears in Apr 3-10, 2014.
