SAN JOSE, CA -- There are pluses and minuses to being neighbors of the athletic Azevedo family of San Jose.
For the next-door Muirheads, there are the bragging rights of living next to the top softball pitcher in the Central Coast Section. The minus would be the fence repairs from Holly Azevedo's occasionally errant pitches.
"Our neighbors have lattice on their fence and every so often we have to get them new lattice," said Ron Azevedo, father of Holly, with a laugh. "When Holly is learning a new pitch she can be a little wild and then it's like she's shooting a bazooka through that lattice."
Imagine how Pioneer High opponents feel. The Mustangs (27-0) have ridden the arm all year long of Holly, a UCLA commit with a 26-0 record in the circle with a 0.00 earned run average. Holly, a 5-foot-9 sophomore who delivers the ball like it was shot out of a cannon, has struck out 234 and walked 22. Opponents are hitting just .118 against her.
Putting her dominance in perspective, softball pitchers who throw 70 miles per hour are equivalent to a baseball pitcher who can throw 99 or 100. Holly throws in the 65-66 range, meaning she's making some mitts pop.
She also has six pitches, a curve, screw, change, rise peel, drop and off-speed drop. It's no wonder opponents have an on-base percentage of just .179 against her and have scored just five runs (all unearned).
Oh, and Holly can also hit. She's batting .377 with 15 runs batted in and seven extra base hits. On a Pioneer team averaging .331, she trails just Alex Luna (.387, nine home runs, 32 RBI) at the plate.
Holly and the Mustangs will put it all on display Saturday at noon when they host Westmont in the opening round of the CCS Division II playoffs.
"She's doing halfway decent," said Ron Azevedo in possibly the biggest understatement in CCS history. "We're just trying to keep her grounded. She has ability and is a pretty good softball player. I just want her to focus and not let it go to her head."
Sometimes Ron, a former athlete at the now-defunct Camden High of San Jose, ponders what is happening between her 16-year-old daughter's ears. Is she concentrating or thinking about her next slice of pepperoni pizza?
"I do wonder what is going through her mind when she's on the mound," Ron said. "Sometimes when she's going up to bat she'll walk by the stands and say 'Hey, where are we going to dinner?' I wonder to myself, 'where did that come from?'"
Normally though the Mustang phenom is locked in, mowing down one batter after another in another inevitable Pioneer victory.
"Her biggest asset is she doesn't get rattled -- that's her biggest gift," Ron said. "When she's under the most pressure she's able to keep calm and cool. That's the key to her success."
Pioneer coach Ernie Garcia has seen the development in the girl who also has a 3.7 grade point average and plays the viola in the school orchestra.
"She's grown from the time she was a freshman," Garcia said. "She has total command of what she does on the mound and she works hard. She's a complete player who not only pitches well for us, but hits well too. She's also become a leader in our dugout."
That's a departure from her freshman year when Holly, perhaps because of shyness, would leave right after games and practices without joining her teammates in dragging and raking the field and cleaning of the dugouts. Now she's all in, and it's made the Mustangs an even better team than last season when it fell to Mitty 7-4 in the DII section finals.
Ah, Mitty. The Monarchs are in DII again and are poised for a possible title-game rematch with Pioneer if both teams win their next two games.
"It was disappointing when we lost to them last year, but we realized we only had one senior and that we'd be strong again this year," Holly said. "We knew we'd get right back on it."
Pioneer already owns one win against Mitty this season, 2-1 in non-league.
For the the Mustang star, sports and softball have been a lifetime endeavor.
Her dad played football and baseball at Camden and her mom, Karen, played badminton and tennis at the same school which stood on a plot of land now occupied by a shopping center.
Holly did gymnastics and cheerleading and played soccer when she was little but segued into softball at age 8 at the urging of her father.
"My dad influenced me -- he said it would be fun and exciting, so I signed up for a rec team," Holly said.
He first team was called the Hornets and it wasn't long before the San Jose girl was stinging the hand of catchers with her powerful deliveries.
"I don't think I was good right away -- you're not ever good right away," Holly said. "But with practice I got good."
Father has coached daughter all along, with the duo spending countless hours in the backyard on her array of deliveries. She also has a private coach, Lisa Mize, a former U.S. Olympian.
"She's been very influential," Holly said of Mize. "She's taught me how to become a better player and gives me little pieces of advice here and there."
Said Ron: "(Lisa and I) hit her from different angles. For me it's been a lot of time in the backyard, working on mechanics."
And shattering some perfectly good lattice, it might be added. But it's just the price the neighborhood must pay for this girl's wondrous gift.
John Murphy is the Web Content Manager of Prep2Prep. He may be reached at jmurphy@prep2prep.com. Follow him on Twitter @PrepCat
