After Tragedy, Thomas Calls on a Different Kind of Strength

Senetha Thomas uses her strength to smack balls over the heads of outfielders as a calling card on the softball field.

But for about a year now, Thomas has called on the kind of strength that comes from within to function on the diamond--and in life.

Thomas, a left fielder on Canyon’s softball team, is still trying to cope with her mother’s death. She hasn’t struggled at the plate this season, but her emotions still get the best of her sometimes.

“I took it pretty hard,” Thomas said. “I miss her.”

Katherine Thomas was 36 when she died last June from a blood clot that traveled from her leg to her heart. Senetha and younger sister, Tracy, a backup first baseman at Canyon, were devastated.

“She went to every single game,” Senetha said of her mother, who was a supermarket checker. “If she worked that day, she tried to get it off. She would switch her shift with somebody.”

The tragedy affected Thomas’ schoolwork. She missed her final exams and had to make them up. And her attitude needed some serious adjustment.

“I slacked off and I fell behind on everything,” said Thomas, who lives in Anaheim Hills with Tracy and their father, Benjamin, a former basketball and football player at Oklahoma who works in a supermarket warehouse.

She gradually caught up and by the time the softball season rolled around, Thomas was ready to help the Comanches battle for a third-consecutive Century League championship. For Canyon Coach Lance Eddy, it meant having a genuine slugger in a sport typically controlled by pitchers.

The team, ranked fifth in the county before Tuesday’s 5-4 loss to fourth-ranked Foothill, seems a good bet to make the Southern Section playoffs. But another league title doesn’t appear likely. The Comanches are two games behind Foothill with two remaining.

But Thomas hasn’t disappointed at the plate. Through 23 games, the right-handed hitter is batting .414 and leads the county in home runs with eight and runs batted in with 31. She has an .828 slugging average, a .512 on-base percentage and is hitting .521 with runners in scoring position. Opposing pitchers haven’t been able to strike her out in 78 plate appearances.

The home run, RBI and slugging marks are Canyon single-season records. She also holds the school record for career home runs with 14 and RBIs with 65. And with the two league games, plus one nonleague contest and the playoffs left, the senior has a shot at the section single-season home run record of 13, set by Cindy Oldham of Ramona Convent in 1987.

However, the operative word when it comes to chasing Oldham’s record is outside, because teams are sending their outfielders to different time zones when Thomas bats.

“They are playing her a mile away and are feeding her off-speed stuff (pitches),” Eddy said. “She hits the ball so hard. About five of the home runs have been over-the-head types and the others have been gappers.”

Thomas’ fielding, though not her forte, has come a long way since those early days of handling batted balls as if they were sprayed with nuclear waste. And her statistics are testimonials to her growth offensively.

But curiously enough, Thomas said she doesn’t particularly enjoy putting her baserunning speed to the test.

“I don’t like having to leg them out,” Thomas, 17, said of her home run shots.

Something else she can do without, Thomas said, is coming face-to-face--or, perhaps, ball-to-face--with those occasional infield rockets. That’s why she prefers to roam the outfield and use her speed to flag down fly balls. Infield duty is for young thrill-seekers, such as her sister, Tracy, a sophomore.

“I like it out there (the outfield),” Thomas said. “I’m not really good with grounders and I don’t really like hard balls hit at me.”

The girls playing defense probably feel a bit shaky themselves when Thomas steps her 5-foot-10, robust frame into the batter’s box. A liner off her bat can make quite an impression, like say, deBeer tattooed across the forehead. Or a shiner for a few days.

“I put everything into it,” said Thomas, who has signed a letter of intent to play softball at Florida State next year. “I swing hard. I’m not going to be cheated.”

Thomas hasn’t been shortchanged much this season, partly because of her natural talent and partly because she has been playing with additional motivation. Thomas said she’s dedicating the season to her mother.

“Every single game I think about her,” she said.