Stacy Redondo Schulte, Marcie Aguilar and Renee Rosas Weatherless were all part of the University of Arizona’s first national softball championship in 1991 and they have been reunited to help lead Salpointe back to state-wide prominence.

 

“It’s truly exciting to bring to the Lancer program some of the things we learned from our days at the U of A under coach Mike Candrea,” explained new head coach Schulte.

“He has influenced all of us in a very significant, positive way! Coach taught us so much about how to be successful on and off the field and we consider it a great honor to pass on many of those lessons to the young ladies on our team.”

Schulte coached the junior varsity team at Salpointe in 1994 and 1995 before she moved up to assist with the varsity team in 1996. Coincidentally or not, the Lancers won the 5A title that year. Schulte stayed with the program until 1998 and remained at first base even though she was nine months pregnant with her son Chad. (Chad is now a freshman at Salpointe).

“When I was first approached by Salpointe to consider the coaching position one of my first thoughts was to build a coaching staff that could work together successfully,” She added.

“When Marcie and Renee agreed to come on board I was extremely excited about the prospect of working with them to rebuild a tradition of winning at Salpointe. We all have shared experiences (we were all on one or more championship teams at the U of A including the first in 1991) and philosophies of softball and along with our fourth coach, Rockie Guevara.”

Guevara is a former Salpointe softball player who played college ball at Western New Mexico and is continuing in her long-time coaching duties for the Lancers.

“We have a lot of returning varsity members who are very talented and come with experience at this level. They understand the pressure and the expectations and know how much hard work is needed to win ballgames,” Schulte added in response to her prospects at Salpointe.

“There are a few of those returning members who have already received interest from colleges and who have already proven their leadership skills by organizing a group of girls to workout with our strength and conditioning coach, Carla Garrett (former UA All-American in track and field) during the off season. Together with the staff, parents, players and school, we look forward to a fun, exciting, winning season!”

Schulte, Aguilar and Weatherless join other former Candrea players at the high school level including Laura Espinoza Watson and Brandi Shriver at Empire, Jill Malina at Mountain View, Danielle Rodriguez at Tucson High and Jody Pruitt at Sunrise Mountain.

Watson, the head coach at Empire, appears to be the most likely of the bunch to win a state championship this spring while Pruitt has taken her squad to two runner-up finishes in her two tenures at her school. Only a player named Kayla Bonstrom prevented her from winning a title last year. Weatherless’ daughter is Ironwood Ridge standout setter Jordan Weatherless.

“During our last reunion, Jody, Laura and I had a chance to talk about our upcoming seasons and we’ll keep track of each other’s teams as the season goes on. Of course we wish each other luck and think it’s pretty awesome that we’re continuing the Candrea legacy with our own teams,” added Schulte.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2013 at 4:15 pm and is filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.