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Gatorade softball player of the year
Posted
at
5:06 pm
by Mike Cane, Herald Writer
For the second consecutive year Sam Skillingstad is the Gatorade Washington Softball Player of the Year.
Skillingstad is a senior pitcher from Shadle Park High School in Spokane. The University of Oregon recruit was 28-1 on the mound with a 0.39 earned-run average. She tallied 396 strikeouts in 178 innings and led Shadle Park to the Class 4A championship game.
Skillingstad was also a potent hitter. She batted .417, drove in 37 runs, scored 28 runs and hit nine home runs.
Typing the impressive stats compiled by Skillingstad makes me think of our area's brightest softball stars. It was very difficult to select an All-Area Player of the Year this spring because we had some extremely strong candidates, including three dominant pitchers: Monroe's Jordan Birch, Cedarcrest's Hillary Barker and Everett's Cory Mattson.
In the end, we selected Mattson, largely because her outstanding performance at the Class 3A state tournament helped Everett place third, best in program history. To read the All-Area story about Mattson click here.
Sometimes I'm forced to leave interesting details out of a story. It happens because I'm told to limit the story to a predetermined length, or because it just doesn't fit the flow of the article.
For the Mattson All-Area story, I left out the fact that she competed with something called Raynaud's disease, which causes poor circulation in parts of the body, including fingers.
That seems pretty problematic for a pitcher who needs to grip the ball. The unusually cold weather this spring didn't help. Mattson said she's had Raynaud's as long as she can remember.
"You just kind of have to deal with it and try to not think about it," she said.
Said Everett softball coach Kyle Peacocke: "It's kind of amazing that she's battled through that."
For more information about Raynaud's disease click here.
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