2013 Softball All-Conference Team
Big West champion Hawai’i took home the lion’s share of the major softball awards with today’s announcement of the 2013 all-conference team. Kelly Majam and Kaia Parnaby headed the honor roll with their selections as Defensive Player of the Year and Pitcher of the Year, respectively. In addition, UH’s Bob Coolen garnered Coach of the Year honors.
Long Beach State earned a chunk of the top awards with the naming of Shayna Kimbrough as Player of the Year and Darian Tautalafua as Freshman Field Player of the Year. Cal State Fullerton right-hander Jasmine Antunez received Freshman Pitcher of the Year recognition to round out the award winners.
Majam (Pine Valley, Calif./Mountain Empire HS) capped off an outstanding senior season as the anchor of the Hawai’i outfield. She committed just one error in 60 chances for a .985 fielding percentage to go along with five assists. At the plate, Majam terrorized opposing pitchers to the tune of a Big West-best 18 home runs, the second-highest total in conference single-season history. In addition, Majam’s 57 runs scored leads the Big West and is just two off the single-season record. She also tops the Big West in on-base percentage (.462) and slugging percentage (.752), while 33 of her 53 hits have gone for extra bases.
Parnaby (Bilgola Plateau, NSW, Australia/NBSC Freshwater Senior Campus) broke two long-standing Big West single-season records as the league’s top pitcher. Her 37 wins sets a new benchmark for Big West hurlers, trumping the 35 that Cal Poly Pomona’s Rhonda Wheatley amassed in 1987. In addition, Parnaby unseated former UH standout Brooke Wilkins as the all-time strikeouts leader. Parnaby fanned double-digit batters 11 times this season on her way to 325 strikeouts, one more than what Wilkins totalled in 1994. The southpaw was an astounding 37-5 with a conference-low 1.47 ERA and just 43 walks in 290.0 innings pitched. Parnaby’s five Big West Pitcher of the Week awards tied her for fifth-most all-time in a season. She went the distance in 36 of her 44 starts and accumulated 11 shutouts.
Coolen earned his second Coach of the Year honor as he reintroduced Hawai’i to the Big West after the program spent the previous 16 years in the Western Athletic Conference. Coolen earned his inaugural Big West Coach of the Year honor in 1994 as the mentor of the co-champion Rainbow Wahine that year. In 2013, Coolen guided UH to the outright championship with a 20-4 record that included series sweeps of five opponents. Coolen led the Rainbow Wahine to their fifth NCAA Tournament appearance in the last seven years, and the program’s 11th postseason berth overall under his tutelage. In his 22nd season at UH, Coolen reached several career milestones this season, including his 100th Big West win, career win No. 800 at the school, and his 900th overall as a four-year collegiate head coach.
Kimbrough (Oxnard, Calif./Frontier HS) became the fifth Long Beach State individual, and first since 2009, to earn the conference’s award for top player. Kimbrough ranked second in the Big West with a .374 batting average and led the league in hits (74). In addition, she tied for second league-wide in runs scored (39) and tied for seventh in stolen bases (13). Those numbers also placed her among some of the top single-season performances in LBSU history as she finished No. 2 in average, tied for No. 3 in hits and No. 5 in stolen bases. The sophomore shortstop compiled 19 multi-hit games and added the Apr. 29 Big West Field Player of the Week to her list of accomplishments this season.
Long Beach State secured its second Freshman Field Player of the Year in Tautalafua (Carson, Calif./Carson HS), on the heels of Jonae Perez in 2005. Tautalafua led the league circuit with 46 RBI, ranked second with 13 home runs and was third in walks (29). She broke the program’s single-season record for RBI, while her 13 bombs tied for the second-most in school history. The outfielder tallied three multi-homer games and knocked in six runs on two separate occasions to tie the LBSU single-game RBI record. Tautalafua also earned Big West Field Player of the Week recognition two times this season.
Antunez (Garden Grove, Calif./Garden Grove HS) is the first Freshman Pitcher of the Year to come out of Cal State Fullerton. She had a huge influence in lowering the Titan team ERA from a Big West worst (5.20) in 2012 to a respectable fourth (3.00) in 2013. Antunez led the Titans with an 18-4 record, 2.56 ERA and 174 strikeouts in 196.2 innings pitched. In the Big West, she ranked sixth in ERA, third in opposing batting average (.215), second in innings pitched, fourth in strikeouts and third in victories. Season highlights included her first career no-hitter against UNLV (Apr. 20). She posted an 8-1 record over her last 13 appearances.
Hawai’i led all Big West schools with six selections to the first-team. Pacific seniors Nikki Armagost and Megan Hom earned spots on the first-team for the fourth time in their careers while Long Beach State junior Erin Jones-Wesley and UC Riverside senior Kayla White became three-time recipients. UC Davis sophomore Justine Vela secured her second straight selection to the All-Big West First Team. The rest of the 2013 Big West All-Conference teams are listed via the link at the top of the page: