Quiet Thunder : CSUN High on Low-Key Maumausolo and Her Noisy Bat

It is no secret that Scia Maumausolo is the No. 1 reason the Cal State Northridge softball team is making a surprising run at a third consecutive Western Athletic Conference title and Women’s College World Series appearance.

Everyone from Northridge Coach Janet Sherman to ace pitcher Kathy Blake-Small has acknowledged the obvious. So where would the Matadors be without this junior catcher who is responsible for nearly one-fourth of Northridge’s runs batted in and ranks as one of the nation’s top 10 sluggers?

Would the Matadors (37-14, 18-4 in conference play) own a two-game lead with six to play in the WAC? Would seventh-ranked Northridge have maintained its top-10 ranking throughout the season?

Thanks to a persuasive sales pitch last August by Sherman, who took over the program in July, the Matadors didn’t have to learn the answers.

Northridge lost eight starters and 13-year Coach Gary Torgeson after last year’s runner-up finish to Arizona in the WCWS. For Maumausolo, who had formed strong friendships since moving in with five of those senior teammates after the Jan. 17, 1994 earthquake, those losses seemed too much to bear. Fearing a lackluster season, Maumausolo considered playing for another college.

“She did have reservations (about coming back),” Sherman said. “Part of it was that the whole class that left were her friends.

“She was concerned about how the program was gonna go and I had to sit her down and tell her, ‘Look, we have our pitchers back and we’re gonna be good.’ But I had to convince her of that.”

It took four such one-on-one sessions, but in the end Maumausolo decided to stay. And Sherman couldn’t be happier.

Maumausolo & Co. are on the road this weekend and face fourth-ranked Fresno State (43-15, 15-7) today at 2 p.m.

Maumausolo leads the team in 11 offensive categories--and by quite a margin. Her .460 batting average is .145 better than that of any teammate. She has scored nearly twice as many runs (32) and has nearly twice as many total bases (103) as any other. She has driven in twice as many runs (34) and belted twice as many extra-base hits (20). Statistically, Maumausolo accounts for between 19% and 45% of the team’s total output in any offensive category.

“We wouldn’t be this far if we didn’t have her,” Blake-Small said.

Maumausolo’s efforts haven’t gone unnoticed--by teammates or opponents.

Of her team-high 27 walks, seven have been intentional. Even top-ranked UCLA recently acknowledged Maumausolo’s amazing ability by issuing the slugger the Bruins’ only intentional walk of the season.

“She’s a tremendous force, not only with her (statistics) but in her leadership,” Sherman said. “She doesn’t say a lot (to teammates), but when she does they listen to her.”

Without her bat doing the talking, Maumausolo might have been lost in the crowd among the brassy bunch that led the Matadors to the WCWS the past two seasons.

But with a stick in hand, Maumausolo fit right in with sluggers such as Beth Calcante, Tamara Ivie and Shannon Jones, all of whom have helped rewrite Northridge batting records.

Said Sherman: “I think (the older players) celebrated her. I think she helped them realize how good the team could be. Her first time out she proved (she could hit with the best of them) and then it was like, ‘Let’s just watch.’ ”

And every time she ripped a home run, her teammates praised her name, “Seeee Ya.”

Maumausolo always knew she would fit in.

“I looked up to (players) like Beth and Tamara because they could talk (trash) and back it up,” Maumausolo said. “(But) I was the quiet one.”

Quiet is an understatement. Maumausolo always has been a player of few words in postgame interviews. She has nothing bad to say about anyone, and rarely anything good to say about herself.

When asked for an extended interview recently, Maumausolo innocently responded: “Why me?”

For Maumausolo, who earned All-American honors after batting .307 and was invited to an Olympic tryout after her freshman season, the less she rests on her laurels, the more she expects for her future.

“I don’t like to flaunt it,” she said. “(I feel it) could be a jinx to me. I’m superstitious. I don’t want to flaunt something and not get it back, or not have it happen again.”

Maumausolo certainly hasn’t jinxed herself this season. A .297 hitter in her first two seasons, Maumausolo is having a career year. Although she had only one hit in her first 12 at-bats, she has been on a tear since.

Leave it to a psychology major to say it’s all in the mind.

“I was telling my mom after everybody graduated, like (Arizona pitcher) Susie Parra, ‘I feel so relaxed, like I’m back in high school, like there’s nobody (I can’t hit).’ ”

Maumausolo, whose father is Samoan and whose mother is half-Irish, half-German, was a four-sport athlete at Mt. Carmel High in San Diego. She was also a promising discus thrower who finished third in the State championships her senior year. But her track career is far from over. Maumausolo plans to throw the discus for Northridge as a fifth-year senior.

Ironically, it was a track coach who told Northridge softball coaches about Maumausolo. And that’s all it took. Torgeson and Sherman, then an assistant, got in a car and drove to Poway to watch their future star play ball.

“We took one look at her and she had such great feet and a real sober attitude that I like,” Torgeson said. “And she hit the crap out of the ball.”

To everyone’s surprise, Northridge was the only college to recruit Maumausolo, who played on partial scholarship as a freshman.

“Nobody else gave me the time of day, basically,” Maumausolo said.

For that, opposing coaches are now forced to think about how to pitch around the big slugger with the humble disposition.

So when Sherman is asked the hypothetical question about the Matadors’ fortunes without Maumausolo, she winces.

“I hate to think about it,” Sherman said.