A RAGE IN THE CAGE : Walker Developed Notable Softball Skills by Taking Swings in Own Back Yard

Dream birthday presents for the average 16-year-old Valley girl--six pounds of mascara, a cellular phone, a private audience with Bon Jovi, a foreign sports car--weren’t even on Karen Walker’s wish list. She wanted her own back-yard batting cage.

“She could have had a car,” her mother says, “but she chose the cage.”

That was six years ago. Even without her own car, she still managed to get to the Galleria. Meanwhile, her personal fast-pitch softball pitching slave drilled enough fat ones over the middle to help her become All-Pacific 10 Conference at UCLA and a member of the gold medal team at this summer’s U.S. Olympic Festival in Oklahoma.

Had Karen selected the car and not worked on her swing, all the Walkers--a family of six--might have seen less of the country. Playing in the stratosphere of women’s fast-pitch softball--including summers in the American Softball Assn. major league--Walker was making long trips 11 months of the year. Her family followed her everywhere.

“We only missed two college games, when UCLA played up in Oregon,” says Janette Walker, who has seen her daughter play hundreds of games coast to coast.

The batting cage still stands under a tall pine in the Walkers’ Woodland Hills back yard. But fallen needles have collected like thatch on the netting and the pitching machine has been borrowed by one of her brothers, Kirk, an assistant women’s softball coach at UCLA. At 22, with no college eligibility remaining, Walker is going through softball withdrawal. Her career--and the pace of her family’s life--have slowed considerably.

Starting this month, Walker will be finishing her undergraduate degree in kinesiology at UCLA, concentrating on just school for the first time. “I’ve played softball year-round since I’ve been 13,” she says, “so I’m kind of excited to be a regular student. I also want to try other sports like volleyball and inner-tube water polo and golf. It’s sad I can’t play softball any more, but I’m looking forward to doing other things.”

Walker wasn’t always so consumed by softball. As a child, she preferred playing with Barbie dolls. But she grew up in the wrong neighborhood--one with lots of little boys, including her three older brothers. “I never wanted to play sports with them,” she says, “but they always dragged me out.” Depending on the sport, “They made me hike (the football) or play right field.”

When she was 7, she followed in her brothers’ cleat marks and played organized softball at a park in Woodland Hills. It wasn’t long before she traded Barbie for a fielder’s glove. “The boys liked it that I was good,” she says, “but I didn’t like to show them up.”

At 13, Walker found herself playing on a summer traveling team, the San Fernando Valley Shilos. She went to ninth grade at San Fernando Valley Academy in Northridge but left because the school didn’t have a sports program. At El Camino Real High, she started at shortstop for three years, becoming co-City player of the year as a senior.

“It’s funny, but I never really dreamed of playing softball,” says Walker, a 5-6 blue-eyed blonde. “I never even planned on playing college ball. But opportunities just seemed to keep opening up.”

Walker jumped at the chance to play with the Brakettes, a Stratford, Conn., team that has won 20 of the past 30 ASA women’s national titles. The team won the gold in this year’s Olympic Festival but finished second in the nationals.

A clutch hitter who bats over .300, Walker has been a Brakette for the past three summers. She was recruited by one of the players, Sharon Backus, co-coach of the UCLA women’s team.

Walker was bothered by injuries her last two years at UCLA when the Bruins won back-to-back NCAA Division I titles. A knee injury in her junior year required surgery and a collision this season caused a major contusion on her leg. But she was known for her physical toughness.

“Many other athletes would have just succumbed with injuries like those,” says UCLA co-coach Sue Enquist, who also played for the Brakettes. “But Karen has the biggest heart of any player I’ve seen here at UCLA. She’s a phenomenal athlete who has the ability to play through the pain.”

Enquist will miss Karen--and her family. “They are a special group of people,” she says. “Janette even was a volunteer at the concession stand.”

Walker will resume her softball career this summer with the Brakettes, and she’s hoping to make the U. S. team for the Pan-American Games. But she knows that someday she won’t be able to take the game as seriously. “They say women reach their peak at 25 or 26 in fast-pitch,” Walker says, “although there are three of our women on the Brakettes who are 30.”

Walker probably will become a physical therapist, but there is also a chance that she will coach. “When I go to graduate school,” she says, “I’ll be a graduate assistant with a softball team to see if I want to go into coaching.”

Either way, she’ll stay active. “I have to be athletic,” she says.

Which means there yet may be life left in the old batting cage.