Perfect Pitching Hasn’t Spoiled Jennifer Van Wie : Prep softball: Miraleste High mound ace has a big role on her team but not a big ego.

With three perfect games in the last season and a half, it might be easy for Miraleste High School softball pitcher Jennifer Van Wie to let success go to her head.

But her teammates won’t let it happen. The good-natured sarcasm they direct at the Marauders’ star helps keep Van Wie just another one of the girls.

“She’s stuck up and conceited,” one teammate says while smiling at Van Wie, who gives her accuser a playful push.

“Yeah, and she sings in the shower,” another chimes in.

“Make sure to cross out all the curse words,” one of the Miraleste players advises a reporter interviewing Van Wie.

Van Wie said she doesn’t mind the teasing. In fact, she wouldn’t have things any other way.

In team sports, there probably isn’t a more important position than pitcher in softball. But Van Wie, who is also the No. 3 hitter in the lineup, likes to think of herself only as part of the team.

“A lot of times, there’s a lot of emphasis on the pitcher or the dominating player,” said Van Wie, who no-hit Mary Star on Tuesday to raise her season record to 10-1. “But it can’t be done without the team.

“I get a lot of press sometimes, but if I didn’t have my team behind me, I wouldn’t be anywhere. And we just have a great team this year.”

Indeed, Miraleste is 10-2 overall and first in the Camino Real League at 6-0. Van Wie has accounted for all six league wins and has an earned-run average of 0.20 in Camino Real play.

Van Wie’s success this season hasn’t surprised anybody, considering that she pitched two perfect games in 1989. She started every league game last year, when the Marauders lost only once.

Van Wie, a four-year varsity starter, said the 1989 campaign was a turning point in her career.

“My freshman and sophomore years, I just came out here. And, I think because I was younger, I didn’t take it as seriously as I do now,” she said. “But in my junior year, no matter what, I’d run four laps a day.

“I still do my running no matter what the team does. If they slack off, it’s still up to me to discipline myself.”

Van Wie has 106 strikeouts in 53 innings and is a master of the riser.

“I throw windmill (style), and my main pitch is the riser,” she explained. “If the batters get ahold of it, it’s usually going to go straight into the ground--if they get on top of it--or it’s going to go right up.

“And then I have my other pitches here and there to try to throw them off: a fastball, a change-up, a curve every once in a while, and a drop. But I still have to perfect them because I don’t want to go out there and hit anybody.”

With a mischievous grin, she added: “But, then again, that’s part of the game.”

A hard thrower, Van Wie hasn’t had the velocity of her pitches tested since she was 13 years old, when she was timed at “about 52 miles per hour,” she said.

Failing to exhibit an oversized ego to match her strikeout count, Van Wie added: “People have sometimes asked me how fast I throw, but I don’t really care. Stats and those type of things aren’t me.”

Typically, after Van Wie pitched a perfect game in this season’s league opener against St. Mary’s Academy on March 15, she said it wasn’t particularly a big deal to her.

But she admitted that her first perfect game last season was thrilling because it put her on a par with her two sisters: Lisa, a former star at Bishop Montgomery High School and now a junior at Brigham Young University, and Sunshine, 13.

“My older sister had pitched a perfect game, and even my younger sister had pitched one, but I had never pitched one at any level,” Van Wie said. “I was the last one, so it was nice to get it.”

But she denied that there is any sibling rivalry. “We’re not compared in our family as far as what we can do in softball,” said Van Wie, who has received an academic scholarship to BYU and will join Lisa on the Cougars’ pitching staff next season. “We’re all just doing the best we can.”

Van Wie said having Lisa as a role model has clearly been important to her development.

“I’ve played ever since I was 4 because I started pitching in her footsteps,” she remembered. “She decided--after she’d played a year when she was real young--that she wanted to be a pitcher.

“And my dad thought that would be a good position, so he taught us the same basics.”

Van Wie said support from her parents, Bernard and Judy, has been crucial to her success. And she is quick to point out that the proper word is “support,” not “pressure.”

“I’m really glad that my parents helped me get into sports,” said Van Wie. “Softball is something I really love to do.

“But there was never any pressure to do it. It was academics and education that were always stressed.”

Van Wie said her mother is a college student, “but somehow she arranges her schedule so that she’s at every game.

“She makes sure I eat pasta the night before every game. In some ways, she’s almost more dedicated than I am. My dad is the same way. In the absence of a son, he really enjoys working with us.”

Prior to Tuesday’s home game with Mary Star, Van Wie said to a teammate: “My dad sent a note to me in class today wishing me good luck. Isn’t that sweet?”

About as sweet as the 16-0 win that followed.