UCLA Sophomore Packs Eye-Popping Power

There’s no getting around it. Stacey Nuveman is 6 feet tall, weighs about 225 pounds and hits home runs. Lots of home runs.

Home runs that travel in a rising arc of majesty and strength, home runs that travel over the scoreboard at UCLA’s Easton Field, home runs that rise above the treetops.

The sophomore has 27 home runs this season, nine more than anybody else in the NCAA. The UCLA home run record for a career had been 30. In less than two seasons, Nuveman already has 47.

Before Nuveman came to UCLA from St. Lucy’s Priory High School in Glendora (which happens to be the sister school of Mark McGwire’s alma mater, La Verne Damien), the UCLA single-season home run record was 14. As a freshman, Nuveman hit 20.

So Nuveman has grown used to the questions. About where she gets her power. About how long her home runs travel. About setting home run records. About whether she wants to be compared to McGwire.

And Nuveman, who has bright blue eyes and blond hair and a directness about her answers, will tell you whatever you want to know about home runs. Then she tells you something else. That what she is most proud of is that up until last weekend, she had been hitting .500.

“That would be so cool, if I hit .500 for the season,” she said after practice on a bright, sunny softball-perfect afternoon at UCLA. “Honestly, given a choice between a home run record and hitting .500, I’d pick .500.”

UCLA is 52-5 and ranked No. 1. But that ranking isn’t unanimous. Two first-place votes went to Fresno State in the most recent poll. What seems unanimous is that Nuveman is the best collegiate player in the country. She is, UCLA Coach Sue Enquist says, a player talented enough both physically and mentally, to change the game.

Nuveman, a catcher, has a swing that seems so effortless, so seamless that the air is not being disturbed. She throws from behind the plate to second base as easily as if playing catch with herself. She moves as if on tiptoes, lightly and economically. She has big but soft hands that have no trouble digging the ball from the dirt.

At the end of this long afternoon of practice, a session that had begun at 2:30 and was still going on as 6 p.m. approached, Enquist announced that it was up to her team to pick four players. Each player would have one chance to lay down a perfect bunt. If the four players did that, there would be no running to end practice. Nuveman was the second player chosen.

“We’ve never seen this combination of power and control and athletic skills in a player this size,” Enquist says.

Lisa Fernandez, a star of the 1996 Olympic gold-medal U.S. softball team and now an assistant coach with UCLA, says that Nuveman “has one of the strongest arms in the game and a unique balance between power and hitting for average. It’s very rare to see that combination in one player.”

Nuveman got her love of the game from tagging along with her father, Tom, and brother, Ryan. Tom coached Ryan in Little League baseball and Stacey grew quickly to love the game even as she grew taller and stronger than all the other girls around.

She is lucky, Nuveman says, to be in an era when girls are allowed to be proud of having size and strength. Nuveman is not shy about rolling up her T-shirt sleeves and showing off muscles. She is not shy about putting on her catcher’s equipment or of standing up straight with her shoulders thrown back.

Enquist says that Nuveman has become an expert at hitting, as Enquist says, “from foul line to foul line,” and at not aiming for the trees. Nuveman says that she hardly ever thinks about hitting home runs. It is her goal, she says, “just to get hits.” Besides leading the nation in home runs, she is No. 1 in runs batted in with 79, 18 more than the closest challenger, and is third in the nation in batting average at .479.

As she set records for hits, RBIs, doubles, triples, home runs, walks and extra-base hits in high school, Nuveman’s legend grew.

“I heard so much about this girl,” Enquist says. “And when I first saw her, she lived up to it all.”

Nuveman had everything, Enquist found out, except a certain presence, an ability to be the leader that Enquist knew was necessary.

“If things weren’t going perfectly for Stacey, her shoulders would slump, her head would go down,” Enquist says. “I had to tell her that as the catcher, as the one who all her teammates faced, she had responsibility. She understands that now.”

Several of UCLA’s players, Nuveman among them, redshirted last season, when the Bruins were on NCAA probation and barred from the NCAA tournament for offering too many scholarships. Nuveman used the season off to help heal a stress fracture in her foot and to watch and learn about her game and herself.

“I matured,” Nuveman says. “I’ve become a better, smarter player.”

If an NCAA title is the immediate goal, Nuveman can’t help but peeking beyond, at another goal--making the 2000 Olympic team.

Enquist says flat out that Nuveman should make the team, that it would be foolish if she doesn’t. Fernandez, who hopes to play in the Sydney Olympics herself, is more circumspect, saying that Nuveman “certainly has a chance” to make the team.

And Nuveman? You find out that modesty is also one of Nuveman’s talents.

“I’m on the selection list of 60 players and I’m happy about that,” she says.

After the NCAA tournament Nuveman, will head to Fresno for a tryout camp with the 59 others. The best will make this summer’s U.S. Pan-Am team and will be favorites for the Olympic team. It is hard to imagine there won’t be a place for Nuveman.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.