Sultan’s Jeffries is a star at the plate, in the circle and off the field

Published 9:14 pm Friday, March 18, 2016

Sultan senior softball star Shelby Jeffries made a name for herself from the pitcher’s circle, but she is equally as dangerous at the plate. Last season, Jeffries was so good with a bat in her hands that teams started intentionally walking her midway through the season.

Even that couldn’t stop her.

A Lakewood team coached by Travis Boortz learned that the hard way.

“She had already hit a double and a home run against us, so the third time up we were going to walk her as they had a couple of runners on base,” Boortz said. “The pitch was floated high and outside to where she extended her arms and just crushed it. Needless to say, the next day we practiced walking batters. I threw my clipboard down in frustration and couldn’t believe what I had just seen.

“(I) guess we should’ve rolled the ball, but she probably would’ve hit that out too.”

Sultan head coach Garth MacDicken has seen Jeffries do a lot of special things in a Turks uniform, but even that surprised him.

“I was stunned,” he said.

Also stunning were Jeffries’ statistics for the 2015 season.

She finished with a .537 batting average, an on-base percentage of .629, two doubles, 12 home runs and 19 runs scored. MacDicken said most of those home runs came in the first half of the season before teams stopped pitching to her as much. She earned nine wins from the pitcher’s circle and had a 1.47 earned-run average. She struck out 212 batters in 125 innings and gave up just three home runs.

The Turks advanced to the 2A state tournament in 2014 and the 1A state tournament in 2015, but failed to leave with a trophy either time.

Jeffries’ teammates want to send her out with a storybook ending in her final season at Sultan.

“That’s our whole focus this year is to get to state and get to the championship just for her,” senior infielder Rosie Kirkpatrick said. “That’s what she’s been wanting.”

“Shelby deserves nothing more than the state championship,” senior infielder A.J. Fulcher added.

Jeffries is revered by her teammates — and not just for her performance on the field.

“I know Shelby is kind of our drive,” Kirkpatrick said. “She’s what pushes, at least me personally, every day in practice. When we’re having an off day, we come out and say, ‘let’s do this for Shelby’ because she gives it her all all the time. I’ve never seen anyone work as hard as her.”

Fulcher and Kirkpatrick both said Jeffries will take responsibility when something doesn’t go right, even if it isn’t her fault. Jeffries said she does it to pick up her teammates.

“Taking it on myself is something I know I can handle,” Jeffries said. “And I think if I can teach them that I can handle it, then they’re going to be able to handle it more too.”

Jeffries’ approach has worked for Fulcher.

“I can own up to my mistakes because Shelby does,” Fulcher said. “When I miss a ball, it’s like ‘OK guys, sorry. That was my bad.’”

Jeffries’ talent has been apparent since her freshman season. Colleges started to show interest that season and she committed to Cal Poly on an athletic scholarship after her sophomore year. She said Sacramento State was the only other school she strongly considered, but she chose Cal Poly primarily because of her fondness for the coaching staff.

“I love the coaches,” she said. “They’re super-positive and energetic. They were great players and they’re great coaches now.”

Jeffries is one of just a handful of athletes from Sultan to be recruited by an NCAA Division-1 school for an athletic scholarship in the past 30 years.

“Everybody knows Shelby,” MacDicken said. “She’s big to the community and she’s a really positive influence with her church and youth groups and she helps kids out. She’s known throughout every school (in Sultan) because she’s such a positive person.”

Representing Sultan is something that Jeffries doesn’t take lightly.

“This community means everything to me,” Jeffries said. “I’ve grown up here. You can drive down the street and say, ‘I know who that is.’ It’s really cool to be a leader for some of these younger kids. I have a younger sister, she’s in middle school right now. Even to just be someone she and some of her friends can look up to, it’s pretty cool to be that leader and say, ‘you come from a small community, but you can do anything if you put your mind to it and put hard work into it.’”

When Jeffries entered high school she didn’t know of the successes to come, but she always put her faith in the places her work ethic could take her.

“All I know is that I can control how hard I work and I knew I was going to work as hard as I possibly could,” Jeffries said. “I knew that as long as I stuck with the things that I’ve been taught and kept working and pushing myself that I could do some special things and help push some of the girls around me to do the same.”

Aaron Lommers covers prep sports for The Herald. Follow him on Twitter at @aaronlommers and contact him at alommers@heraldnet.com.