Freshmen Start Fast in Fastpitch : Softball: These girls are only in grade 9, but they are grade-A when it comes to facing hitters.

“Think fast.”

In the time it takes to say it, a good softball pitcher--man or woman--can make the best hitters alive look silly.

Some top female professionals have proved it during barnstorming tours in the past 30 years:

--Kathy Arendsen struck out Reggie Jackson.

--Rosie Black struck out Willie Mays.

--Joan Joyce struck out Ted Williams.

The ball might be the size of a grapefruit, but can be as hard to hit as a pea.

At the high school level, the girls’ game is one of reflexes and speed, of defense and pitching.

Everything revolves around the player in the center of the diamond, 40 feet from home. If you have a good one, you’re set. If you don’t, forget it.

It is also a game served by youth, one of the few high school team sports that a freshman can dominate. While most ninth-grade athletes spend their after-school hours on the junior varsity, freshman pitchers are different. They can be something akin to Nolan Ryan at two-thirds the distance.

No fewer than five girls this season are joining that long list of freshmen phenomenons who have had a major impact on their schools. And it usually lasts not just one year, but four.

Mt. Carmel’s Jennifer Ortiz, Bonita Vista’s Kirstie Clark, Coronado’s Stacie Perry, Christian’s Sarah Dawson and Chula Vista’s Monica Medina are all ninth-graders living in a 12th-grade world. Overmatched?

Consider these numbers, before Wednesday night’s games:

--Ortiz is 11-2 with a 0.43 earned run average.

--Clark had four shutouts in a row earlier this season and threw 33 consecutive scoreless innings. She’s 8-1 with a 0.48 ERA.

--Perry is 8-4, but three of her one-run losses came after crucial errors by the defense.

--Dawson has won 12 games and has a 0.63 ERA.

--Medina, called “unlucky” by Coach Debi Daenzer, is 6-4 despite a 0.28 ERA.

Circumstance has given them the opportunity to pitch as ninth-graders; their physical tools and mental makeup have allowed them to open the door when that opportunity knocked.

They are not unlike Castle Park’s Dawn Wood, the most celebrated pitcher in the San Diego Section record book. Now a freshman on scholarship at Arizona State, she’s mentioned 15 times among all-time county leaders, six more than Sandy Miramontes, who pitched for Bonita Vista from 1978-81.

It is not surprising that both played as freshmen, as did Hilltop’s Mary Lou Ramm (1976-79), Orange Glen’s Kim Thweatt (1981-84) and Santana’s Cheryl Forehand (1978-81). Most of the county’s great pitchers were introduced to the varsity not long after they learned the truth about the tooth fairy.

“In softball, if you get a quality freshman pitcher, that’s the one position you bring up right away, because it’s the one position that dominates a game,” says Mt. Carmel Coach Joe Radovich. “The grade level has nothing to do with it; it’s the position.”

The position.

Few have dominated the game the way Wood did from 1986-89, perhaps because she had to be so competitive as a freshman just to work herself into the starting rotation. But that kind of determination is present in most freshman pitchers who make it at the varsity level.

Lloyd (Birdie) Birdsall, who owns Birdie’s School of Fastpitch in Chula Vista, has taught more than 100 pitchers over the past nine years. One was Dawn Wood.

“She was a real workhorse,” Birdsall said. “In high school, they had a senior (Teri Iuli) who had honors to that point, but Dawn was very aggressive in wanting it and worked very hard and eventually got the starting job.

“More than her physical attributes, it was determination and desire that allowed her to be as great as she was.”

Castle Park Coach Tim Tyler says Iuli was able to bow out easily and concentrate on other matters, playing center field and contributing to the offense.

Wood was 12-6-1 her freshman year with a 0.64 earned run average. She finished her career with 58 victories, one short of the section record set by Brenna Hancock of Grossmont from 1986-89. Birdsall says successful freshman pitchers are hungry, as Wood was.

“They have to be,” he said. “If they want their slot on the varsity, they have to take it. Very rarely do you find a slot waiting for you when you enter high school. It’s very difficult, no matter how good you are, to take away a position as a freshman from someone who has been doing the job for two years. Freshmen have to try harder.”

Physically, coaches are looking for a girl who can throw the ball past hitters, who can generate enough velocity to grab a batter’s attention. But beyond that, they are looking for confidence.

“Every freshman pitcher is confident; they know they can do it,” said Mt. Carmel’s Radovich. “You don’t go out to the mound with any hesitation, otherwise you’re not going to throw it by people. If you have any self doubt, you’re in trouble. Some freshmen are very timid out there. Confidence is everything.

“We look for an aggressive pitcher who says, ‘I don’t care who I’m facing, I’m throwing the ball past them.’ ”

Radovich found his pitcher in Ortiz. She was quietly confident and proved in a couple of early scrimmages that she was Mt. Carmel’s best, even though the Sundevils had two competent pitchers already in juniors Trish Maumausolo and Tracy Lorenz.

“She came in and could throw, and she knew it,” Radovich said. “She didn’t have to say anything.”

Coronado found the same quality in Perry.

“She’s very quiet and doesn’t say much, she just takes the mound and does the job,” said Bud Mayfield, the Islanders’ coach. “She puts her intensity into the game. That’s where she finds fulfillment, in the competition. If things are difficult, she bears down. There are girls who cry on the mound when things get tough; that’s not Stacie. All the good ones rise to that level of competition.”

Bonita Vista’s Clark, twin sister of her battery mate, Jaimie, is similarly confident.

“I approach a game from the standpoint that I have control,” she said. “There’s two games in my mind: there’s a team game, and there’s my game. I don’t come out like a snob, but I’m in control of the batters, and that’s how I approach my game. In the team game, I just try to keep everybody pumped up so that we can do well and win.

“I have a lot of confidence on the mound. A lot of the girls I haven’t faced, and if I haven’t faced them, they have to earn my respect as batters.”

She doesn’t sound like a 14-year-old facing opponents four years older.

“I think of everyone as the same age as me so that I don’t feel intimidated, so that I don’t feel scared,” Clark said. “I figure they have to hit what I throw. It doesn’t matter how old they are; their age doesn’t make them any better or any worse.”

And it hasn’t made them any more successful. Opponents are batting just .159 against Clark. And In softball, a good freshman pitcher can change an average team’s fortunes.

Coronado is 8-4, but before Perry arrived, the program had been 0-40 the previous two years.

“We’ve made a great turnaround, and Stacie can get some credit for that, certainly,” Mayfield said. “When she’s out there, we’re always in the game. She has had an impact, yes.”

And pitchers in softball are out there often.

“In baseball, you can’t throw a pitcher every game like you can in softball,” Radovich said. “The underhand motion is the natural motion; it’s one of few sports where a freshman can come in and dominate.”

The better competition a pitcher sees, the better she gets.

Jennifer Martinez pitched as a freshman last year at Sweetwater before transferring to Chula Vista. Daenzer could have used Martinez as the varsity’s ace this year and left Medina to the junior varsity. She didn’t.

“She’s too good for the JV,” said Daenzer, who has guided the Spartan program for 14 years and alternated her pitchers evenly this season. “There’s such a big skill level difference between varsity and JV, and she wouldn’t be challenged at all at the JV level. If they play with better people, they get better.”

That seems to be a common theory among coaches.

“Pitchers capable of pitching varsity aren’t going to improve as competitors if they’re throwing against the JV or frosh,” Radovich said. “The hardest thing for a freshman to handle is the mystique of, ‘I’m a freshman at the varsity level,’ and you have to find out if some girls can handle that, and some of them don’t. But if they’re going to develop, they need to throw against a higher level of competition.”

Almost universally, the best pitchers--and certainly the ones who reach the varsity level so quickly--are working with a pitching coach, usually someone other than their high school coach. Someone like Birdsall in the South Bay or, for many years, Jim Stallard in the East County.

“I’m really thankful to these pitching coaches,” Daenzer said. “Birdie has saved me because I don’t know how to pitch. The good pitchers go to the pitching coaches. It really is a specialized skill, and unless you’ve done it, the coaches are so much better than a beginner. He’s been a lifesaver to our program.”

The students who are learning a skill with a passion and are years ahead of their time often put in an extra 30 to 45 minutes a night after practice.

Bonita Vista is a three-year high school, meaning Clark attends the junior high nearby. Practice begins at 3:30 p.m., the same time her classes let out, so she’s about 15 minutes late every day.

“At the beginning of the season, I was curious to see how the team would accept a freshman,” Coach John Purvis said. “After our first game, it was very obvious.”

In that first game, Clark pitched a four-hitter against Lincoln, didn’t walk a batter and came away with a 14-1 victory.

“They accepted her nicely,” Purvis said. “She’s definitely a part of the team.”

And will be for a long time.

FRESHMAN PHENOMS Top freshman softball pitchers in San Diego County. The Standard: Castle Park’s Dawn Wood, now at Arizona State, was 12-6-1 with a 0.64 earned-run average in 1986. (Statistics before Wednesday’s games.)

Name School ERA W-L Team W-L Kirstie Clark Bonita Vista 0.48 8-1 9-5 Amy Dawson Christian 0.63 12-5 12-6 Amy Miner Patrick Henry 1.47 6-5 8-10 Monica Medina Chula Vista 0.28 6-4 14-6 Jennifer Ortiz Mt. Carmel 0.43 11-2 13-4 Stacie Perry Coronado 2.23 8-4 8-4 Kari Rankin Mira Mesa 4.30 9-5 11-7 Kristie Thorig University City 3.75 7-7 8-7