Dawn Wood Rose to the Occasion, but Pitch Didn’t : Castle Park Junior Missed in Attempt at Record 3rd Consecutive Perfect Game

An unusually large gathering was present to watch Castle Park High School junior Dawn Wood pitch a softball game against Coronado Tuesday afternoon at Castle Park.

People had come to see whether Wood could pitch her third consecutive perfect game and set a national high school record that she had tied last Thursday against Chula Vista.

Parents, classmates, rival players, photographers and members of the media had come to see whether Wood, a 5-foot 3-inch off-the-hip junk pitcher, could do it.

It seemed a bit too much pressure for a 16-year-old.

Yet she seemed calm as she rolled through the fourth inning with Castle Park leading, 13-0, against the Islanders, who are now 1-8.

“She really does maintain,” Alan Wood, her father, said.

Wood’s combination of rises, drops, rotation-less knuckle balls and changeups kept the Coronado batters so off-balance that they swung at pitches they didn’t seem to truly locate. Yet any small mistake would ruin a third perfect effort.

A walk? It didn’t seem possible, as Wood had walked only seven batters in 13 games. But a walk to Coronado’s Courtney Harold on a 3-2 pitch with two out in the fifth inning was what ruined Wood’s bid.

“It was just a fluke,” Wood said about the 3-2 riseball that didn’t rise. “I was kind of nervous about giving up a hit. I never thought I’d give up a walk.”

Of the 79 pitches Wood threw Tuesday, only 14 were called balls. She threw five in the fifth inning and no more than three in any other.

“I gave her (Harold) a dirty look,” Wood said. “After the game, she said, ‘I’m sorry.’ I told her she had a good eye. She did. The pitch was low.”

Wood’s immediate reaction to the fourth ball was no different from her reaction after any other pitch. She had wanted very much to set a national record, but she maintained.

“I never imagined I’d have a chance to tie a national record,” she said. “A chance to break a record like that doesn’t come too often. I could have had it. Today I found out what pressure was like.”

There was much less pressure last Thursday when she tied the record with a 2-0 win over Chula Vista, because no one knew about it until later that evening.

“Nobody expected me to do it the second time,” Wood said. “I couldn’t believe it. Chula Vista has always been a hard team to beat. I went in there to try to be a little bit more relaxed. I tried to get a first strike (with a pitch low and inside) before I used my junk. As for the record, I still have one more year.”

On Tuesday, when Christina DeJesus’ routine popup to lead off the seventh inning dropped between third baseman Kirsten Law and shortstop Mary Mundry, Wood’s no-hit string was ended after 20 innings.

“The hit was miscommunication all the way around,” Castle Park Coach Tim Tyler said. “It was partly my fault. I was yelling for Mary to get it.”

Wood is 10-3 this season with an 0.38 earned-run average. She has struck out 108, has 5 consecutive shutouts, has allowed 2 hits in her last 28 innings and has 3 no-hitters (5 in her career). Those are not bad numbers for a player who started out as a right fielder and believed she wasn’t very good at that position.

As a freshman, Wood (12-9-1 with an 0.64 ERA) was named the South Bay League’s player of the year. However, last season, she finished with a 12-12 record and 162 strikeouts but 38 walks.

“Last year, people realized what she threw and concentrated on the rise,” Tyler said. “Now she’s increased her velocity and she’s not very readable.”

Earlier this season, in the Hilltop tournament, Wood was hit by a pitch on her right wrist in the second inning. It didn’t seem like much to her at the time, but it got worse. When she pitches, her right arm windmills around and smacks against her right hip as she releases the ball. After being hit, Wood not only pitched the final five innings of that game, a 3-1 victory over San Marcos, but she pitched two more games that day, both 3-1 losses.

“It was stupidity on our part to let her pitch,” Alan Wood said. “That night, it was puffed up the size of a baseball and bruised very badly.”

He said the deep purple bruise stretched from Dawn’s wrist to her elbow. She didn’t pitch for five days, which was like a vacation to her, considering that she puts in a minimum of one hour a day six days a week all year long on the mound. Since her return, she has allowed four hits and no runs.

All the statistics, records and victories will mean very little to Wood if they don’t help her reach one of her biggest goals.

“I want to get a scholarship to a college in California and be a teacher,” she said. It is a goal she has had since eighth grade.

“Softball has helped me pick out my goals in life,” she said. “It teaches me about competition and lets me feel what it’s like to be under pressure.”

Wood and Tyler are teaming up to help her reach her goal.

“One of the big things she’s working on is academics,” Tyler said. “She works on her end of it, grades and SAT, and we’ll work on our end of it, getting people to know who she is. People now know who she is.”