BY NATE KOTISSO | STAFF WRITER
LA JOYA — Sabrina Salinas is already part of softball history in La Joya, and the Coyotes postseason is yet to get underway.
When she was 9, Salinas played baseball at the Boys & Girls Club in La Joya because softball was not yet available locally. Softball launched in La Joya when she was 11, and Salinas made the switch.
“When we began, we didn’t have a pitcher,” Salinas said. “So my dad said, ‘You know what? You’re going to pitch.’ I was totally for it until I realized just how hard it was. I couldn’t hit a strike to save my life. We didn’t win a game our first year. It was bad.”
Salinas continued to pitch even when her younger self wanted to do almost anything else.
“I resented pitching for a little while,” Salinas said. “As I kept pitching, I just got to the point where I started getting better and better at it. Pitching was the only thing that I really knew how to do. I needed to perfect this, because I want to be the best that I can be at it. I had to swallow that pill and try to make the best I can out of it.”
As the Coyotes’ No. 1 starting pitcher for the second year in a row, Salinas had to deal with rising expectations in two ways. After going 14-4 with a 1.82 earned run average last season, she felt more of a responsibility to end her high school career on a note high enough to entice college softball programs to offer Salinas a scholarship spot. Additionally, Salinas would be part of a senior-laden team that had an opportunity to capture a district crown as the competition in 30-6A grew younger.
But the 2018 season didn’t start the way Salinas would have liked, either. In the season opener against Zapata, seven of the 12 batters Salinas faced in 2 1/3 innings reached base. She also had a forgettable three-start, two-day stretch at the Calallen softball tournament. Salinas pitched 12 innings, allowing 21 hits, 12 earned runs and nine walks against Corpus Christi Calallen, Fort Worth Boswell and San Antonio Incarnate Word in early February.
“She did struggle a bit,” La Joya High coach Carlos Rodriguez said. “Expectations were high, and she wasn’t where we needed her to be.”
“People were looking up to me going into this year expecting me to perform,” Salinas said. “The fact that I wasn’t where I wanted to be, it started to get to me. My team is counting on me, and the people of La Joya are counting on me, so I felt a lot of pressure.”
Salinas made a complete 180 upon returning from Corpus Christi. After starting the year 1-2, Salinas has gone 17-3 to end the regular season. Her regular season ERA whittled down to a more familiar 1.86 in 135 1/3 innings. She has become a strikeout menace for opponents, sitting down 132 for the season. He struck out seven or more batters in each of the last seven district games.
“The pressure makes me nervous,” Salinas said. “Being nervous means that I actually want to be where I am. It means the game is important to me. If I’m sitting on the bench and not being able to do anything, then I won’t feel the need to push myself. Feeling the nerves, the butterflies, makes me want to prove something to everybody.”
“We’ve had some great pitchers in our history, and she’s definitely one of the hardest workers that we’ve had,” Rodriguez said. “She prepares herself for any kind of game. If the game’s going to go nine innings, like it did at (McAllen) Rowe, she’ll tell you that she’s thrown a lot more in practice than in a game like that. She was fine with whatever had to get done.”
After Salinas recorded the final out of the regular season against La Joya Palmview last Friday, the Coyotes (24-8) stood tall over District 30-6A with an outright title and an undefeated 12-0 record. The Coyotes’ 12-0 district record was also the fulfillment of a preseason bet between Rodriguez and his players.
“Coach had a really big beard at the beginning of the year, so we asked him, ‘If we went 12-0 in district, could he dye the beard in hot pink or something like that?’ He said no,” Salinas said.
“The pink beard wasn’t going to happen,” Rodriguez said.
“Our next resort was to ask if he would shave the beard instead, and he agreed to that,” Salinas said. “We wanted to do something different.”
“We kidded around about the beard because I started growing it after Thanksgiving,” Rodriguez said. “I only agreed to it if we went 12-0 in district. Not district champs and then going 11-1. That wouldn’t work. I shaved it off Saturday morning. I showed up to practice that day, and we celebrated.”
The Coyotes will meet the Laredo Alexander Bulldogs, the No. 4 seed representing District 29-6A, in a three-game series beginning at 7 p.m. Friday at the La Joya Softball Complex.
“We’ve seen a little bit of film and have some scouting material on them,” Rodriguez said. “We’ll see how we do.”