Chellevold Finds Slap Happiness : Arizona: Former Thousand Oaks standout pursues NCAA record for hits in a season.

Mike Candrea, coach of defending national champion Arizona, makes a diplomatic move when asked point-blank if he believes Amy Chellevold is the best hitter in college softball. Chellevold, an Arizona junior from Thousand Oaks High, is batting .504 in 228 at-bats.

Candrea doesn’t answer directly, perhaps because he believes Chellevold is something more than the best hitter.

Candrea invokes the name of Lisa Fernandez, a former UCLA pitcher who finished 93-7 with a 0.22 earned-run average and batted .510 last year, best in Division I. Fernandez, a four-time All-American, is the Babe Ruth of college softball. The best who ever played, some say.

“It’s truly amazing,” Candrea said, “when someone gets a hit every two times at bat. Lisa Fernandez is at another level. She dominated both offensively and on the mound. I’m comparing their work ethic.

“Amy Chellevold is like Lisa Fernandez in that she’s got great athletic ability and, when she realized how good she could become, she put it all together.”

Chellevold (5-foot-6) already has shattered the school record of 78 hits in a season--she has 117. In Thursday’s 8-0 victory over Illinois-Chicago in the first round of the College Softball World Series in Oklahoma City, Chellevold was two for three.

She is six hits short of the NCAA record of 123 set in 1992 by South Carolina’s Tiff Tootle. Chellevold is also a cinch to break Gail Davenport’s school record .413 batting average set in 1977.

Chellevold’s average is better than those of seven of the last 10 NCAA batting champions, but she won’t win the championship this season. Sara Graziano of Coastal Carolina finished at .589. But Sean Straziscar, an NCAA softball statistician, points out that only one batting champion (Fernandez) has come from the West Coast the last 10 years.

“The pitching’s better out there,” he said.

Chellevold has played against some of the best competition in the nation. No. 1-ranked Arizona (60-3) has played 39 of its games against ranked teams. Among the pitchers Chellevold has faced are two first-team All-Americans, UCLA’s Dee Dee Weiman and Southwestern Louisiana’s Kyla Hall.

“It’s a lot of confidence,” Chellevold said. “I had a good feeling early in the season and it kept going. A lot of people who get into slumps, it’s all in their head. But I’ve stepped up there knowing what I want to do.”

Indeed, Chellevold, a left-handed slap-and-bunt specialist who can also hit for power, has turned the heads of fans and psyched out opposing infielders. She batted .319 as a freshman and .379 last season. She was a second-team All-American in ’93. This year she and five other Arizona players (including second baseman Jenny Dalton of Glendale High) were selected to the first team.

But she came to Tucson with little softball recognition. As a youth, she concentrated on volleyball and figured any collegiate All-American awards would come in that sport.

She was named one of the nation’s top-50 youth players by Volleyball Monthly magazine and was a Junior Olympic All-American who played setter on the U.S. Junior National “B” team.

She played softball in youth leagues and in high school, but the sport was secondary. She accepted a volleyball scholarship to UC Santa Barbara but left the program after her freshman season because she was dissatisfied with Coach Kathy Gregory’s style.

But the following semester, she accepted a scholarship to Arizona and joined a former Thousand Oaks teammate, outfielder Jamie Heggen.

Even though Candrea had never seen Chellevold, he knew she had the speed to bat leadoff. Assistant Larry Ray had spotted her at a high school tournament during her senior season, timed her running to first base and had offered her a scholarship on the spot.

“Jamie Heggen said, ‘Coach, you’re going to love this girl,’ ” Candrea said. “I had a lot of confidence in Jamie’s recommendation because she knew my program.”

Amy’s father, Larry Chellevold, was a football player at NCAA Division III Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. Her mother, Karen, was ranked 10th in the country by the U.S. Tennis Assn. in girls’ 16-17-year-old singles. Amy was a top scorer for a 12-year-old soccer team that won an American Youth Soccer Organization national championship. At Thousand Oaks, she played setter for her older sister, Julie, on the volleyball team and was named All-Southern Section three times and Marmonte League most valuable player twice.

“I’ve loved sports my whole life, and they’ve pretty much come naturally,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine my life without them. I can pick up on things pretty easily.”

Even so, her family has been stunned by what Chellevold has accomplished against the best softball competition.

“Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined this,” Larry Chellevold said. “But she’s always been focused. She hates to lose.”

Chellevold worked intensively on batting technique when she got to Arizona. A left-handed thrower who used to bat right-handed, Chellevold was moved to the left side of the plate by Candrea and was taught different ways to produce infield hits.

She came of age in the 1992 World Series, where she was four for four against Kansas and got three hits against Fernandez in the championship game, won by UCLA, 1-0. After a 1993 off-season of training in the weight room, Chellevold has added more speed and power to her game. She has nine doubles, four triples, four home runs and ranks fourth on the team with 47 runs batted in. She has stolen 31 bases in 39 attempts and strikes out only once every 15.2 at-bats.

Chellevold has taken leadoff hitting at Arizona to a new level, already surpassing Vivian Holm, previously the best leadoff hitter Candrea had coached. Holm, a tall and swift left-handed hitter, totaled 241 career hits from 1987-90. Chellevold, with another year of eligibility, has 252.

“What’s remarkable is teams are much better at defending the slap now,” Candrea said. “But I think Amy has some of the best offensive potential I’ve seen. She’s got a lot going for her.”