DOUBLE VISION

Strangers can’t tell them apart.

Folks who have known them for years still mistake one for the other.

Put them in Camarillo High softball uniforms, stand them at reasonable distance and even their own mother would be guessing at who’s who.

“I can’t really tell until they pitch, or until they start talking,” Anne Nevard said.

Twins Kathryn and Meredith Nevard of Camarillo are indeed strikingly similar in looks. The teeth, the hair, the build, the smile. Who needs a mirror when they have each other?

Yet, upon closer review, you learn their differences are as many as their similarities. In fact, they are the mirror image of each other. Literally.

Kathryn is right-handed, Meredith is left-handed.

Kathryn’s stronger eye is Meredith’s weaker eye.

Their hair patterns are exactly opposite.

When their dentist finds a cavity in Kathryn’s right No. 2 bicuspid, he’s sure to find a cavity in Meredith’s left No. 2 bicuspid. It never fails.

Mirror images have provided the twins with answers from an early age.

Anne Nevard, the mother of three girls, recalls when her twins as toddlers began to realize they were different people.

“They were both looking in the mirror at the same time,” Anne Nevard said. “Then they turned and looked at one another and had this puzzled look.

“And then they looked back in the mirror.”

Then a mini-investigation ensued.

“Dith?” Kathryn asked, pointing her finger at her sister. “Kat?” Meredith questioned.

“And it would go back and forth in the mirror like that,” Anne Nevard said. “It was so cute.”

A while later, a 3-year-old Meredith asked for a haircut.

She wanted her hair cut short in a wedge. Thinking Meredith was seeking a sort of independence from Kathryn, Anne Nevard complied.

“She got it cut,” Anne Nevard said. “Darling style. When she got out of the chair, she looked in the mirror and said, ‘Now I’m Meredith,’ ”

Although they had distinctly different tastes in hair and clothes growing up, they’ve always shared the same sense of humor.

None of the common twin pranks have gone undone. Like when one sister takes a phone call from a boyfriend and pretends to be the other.

Or the time in eighth grade when the twins switched classes for an April Fool’s prank and no teacher was the wiser.

“I think when we get older it’s going to be really fun tricking our kids,” said Kathryn, the “older” sister by eight minutes.

Not even Kathryn and Meredith’s mother is off-limits. Anne Nevard recalls taking more than one call from one twin checking in from someone’s house, pretending and covering for the other who might have been somewhere she shouldn’t be.

But that worked only about one in 10 times.

“I can tell their voices about 90% of the time,” Anne Nevard said.

If only everyone could say the same.

How many times a day is Meredith confused for Kathryn? It’s more the rule than the exception anymore.

It took Coach Miki Mangan more than a year to tell them apart, even in face-to-face conversation.

“I would talk to Meredith like she was Kathryn and she would look at me like I was crazy,” Mangan said. “Now there’s a difference if you know them.”

Among the biggest of differences between them is their athletic careers at Camarillo.

As freshmen, Kathryn made the varsity softball team and was dominating enough to split time with hard-throwing Cindy Ball, an established junior at the time who now pitches for University of Pacific.

Meredith was left to pitch for the junior varsity team.

“It wasn’t that [Kathryn] was better [than Meredith],” Mangan said. “She was just stronger with different pitches. Stronger with her riseball and her movement on her curve.

“Meredith is a lot stronger with her screwball, her change-up and her dropball.”

Meredith pitched for the junior varsity for two years and was quite satisfied.

“I enjoyed JV,” Meredith said. “It’s not as bad as everyone thinks. I just wanted to pitch and I knew if I was on varsity, I wouldn’t pitch.”

Junior year, Meredith was ready for the big time. Ready to split time with a sister who had established herself as Ventura County’s finest.

They were going to be the most potent one-two punch in the region. In a doubleheader against Thousand Oaks early in the 1999 season, each recorded a three-hit shutout.

But only weeks later, doctors detected three ovarian cysts, one the size of a grapefruit, during a routine physical on Meredith.

After doctors removed the benign cysts, Meredith took several weeks to recover.

She never regained her full strength and pitched sparingly after her return. Still, she was unbeatable. In 52 innings, Meredith was 6-0, struck out 42, walked only three and allowed no earned runs.

Doctors were convinced since Meredith had cysts, Kathryn probably had them too. Fortunately, there was no mirror image in this case. An ultrasound showed nothing unusual in Kathryn.

Recovered and ready to make her mark as a senior after a successful summer in travel ball, Meredith looked forward to sharing time with Kathryn in the pitcher’s circle.

But in February, doctors found another cyst, this one the size of a lime.

A second surgery in March left Meredith recovering for several weeks.

She returned to the team three weeks later, but is still nowhere near full strength.

Still, it hasn’t affected her perfect record. Meredith is 2-0, has struck out 14 in 17 innings, allowed four hits and one walk and has not allowed a run.

“I still feel that I’m not up to my potential,” Meredith said. “I’d say I’m like 85% of my strength.”

Kathryn’s senior season has been business as usual even though her record is a deceptive 10-6.

The dominating pitcher with the easy-going approach and accelerating riseball has struck out 193 in 111 innings. She’s walked seven. That’s a strikeout-to-walk ratio of about 28-1.

In the formative years, credit Meredith for Kathryn’s rise to dominance. About seven years ago, Kathryn was not at all interested in pitching. She was going to be a shortstop.

Meredith was taking pitching lessons about a year before Kathryn reluctantly joined her.

“I remember I didn’t want to go,” Kathryn said. “I didn’t even want to pitch windmill. I just wanted to throw the ball over the plate.

“I had this thing. I didn’t want to be a pitcher.”

Fast forward a few years and Kathryn not only wanted to be a pitcher, she wanted to be the best in the family.

“I used to think that [Meredith] was better than me and that’s why I’d always try to do better,” Kathryn said. “I thought if she’s better than me, I want to be better.

“And I would work so hard to get better.”

Given the circumstances of her health setbacks, Meredith will probably never get to show in high school how similar she is to her sister in the pitcher’s circle.

But there’s always college.

Having grown up taking pitching lessons together, always playing on the same team and having so many of the same classes, Kathryn and Meredith said they are ready for a break and are opting to go to different colleges.

Kathryn has signed a letter of intent to play for Illinois, which is in its first year of Division I competition.

Meredith, an above-average painter with two years of private lessons to her credit, was recently accepted into the elite art design program at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

And if she hasn’t made a big enough impression on SLO softball coaches by the end of the summer to merit a scholarship, she will try to make the team as a walk-on.

Should they end up facing each other in college competition, it would be a first.

But maybe the most competitive game they’ve ever pitched.

“I wouldn’t want to lose, that’s for sure,” Kathryn said with a big smile. “There’s no way I’d lose that game.”

Of course, that also goes for Meredith.

“I’d win.”