Foothill’s Medrano earns top 4A softball honor

Given the option, Foothill softball coach Tom Mayes would have liked to put Shelbie Medrano at shortstop and pitcher at the same time.

 

As long as she was somewhere in the lineup, though, Mayes was happy.

 

And why not? All the senior did was hit .523 with 56 RBIs, and she recorded 266 strikeouts to lead the Falcons to their second straight Sunrise Region title and a third consecutive state tournament appearance.

 

Medrano is the player of the year on the Review-Journal’s Class 4A all-state softball team.

 

“She has a lot to offer on offense and defense,” Mayes said. “We’re a better team defensively when she’s at shortstop. She doesn’t have a lot of (different) pitches, but she’s able to control the ball and put it right where you want her to.”

 

In two games in the state tournament, Medrano struck out 32 batters in 14 1/3 innings.

 

“As a senior, that’s what you want in games like that,” Mayes said. “After the loss (in the first game), it would have been easy to say we were done, but we came back and battled.”

 

The Sunrise Region pitcher of the year, Medrano finished 18-9 with a 1.53 ERA and the 266 strikeouts in 164 innings, an average of more than 11 strikeouts per seven innings.

 

Her work in the circle lightened the load on Foothill’s defense, which had few plays to make in the field, and lessened the potential for errors.

 

“She spent a lot of time in the summer mentally working on her game, and she got a lot stronger,” Mayes said. “She was able to throw a little harder.”

 

Still, Medrano might have been more dangerous in the batter’s box.

 

The Falcons’ No. 3 hitter, Medrano had 68 hits and a .523 average in Foothill’s 41 games. She slugged seven home runs.

 

“If we had a runner on and could get to Shelbie, we had a very good chance to score,” Mayes said.

 

The Falcons had just enough firepower in the rest of their lineup to make teams think twice about pitching around Medrano. And though they didn’t necessarily give Medrano good pitches to hit, it didn’t seem to matter.

 

She struck out only seven times in 130 at-bats.

 

“She’s a hard person to get out,” Mayes said. “You were going to have to play good defense to get her.”

 

Medrano plans to play next season at the College of Southern Nevada.

 

“She’ll be hard to replace,” Mayes said.