Arizona Wildcats softball coach Mike Candrea signed seven players earlier this week, including one who he said reminds him of a “young Nancy Evans.”

That would be pitcher Nancy Bowling from Royal High in Simi Valley, Calif. She has been committed to Arizona since before her sophomore season.

“She’s very competitive,” Candrea said.

Like Evans, the national player of the year in 1998, Bowling is a top athlete who also is a threat with the bat. Bowling hit .500 as a junior in high school, had a 0.49 ERA, and she has played at the top level of travel-ball competition.

Candrea said he likes the versatility in this class, with shortstop-type athletes who can play other positions.

“I’m excited,” he said. “They look good on paper. We’ll see what they do when they get here.”

The addition of Estela Pinon from Yavapai College will give Arizona a more-comfortable number of pitchers on staff for the 2013 season. She and Bowling will join Kenzie Fowler and Shelby Babcock in 2013.

Here is Arizona’s signing class, via a UA news release:

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Kenzie Fowler finished the season with a 28-9 record. Photo by Mark Evans, TucsonCitizen.com

Some help is on the way for the Arizona softball pitching staff.

The Wildcats tried to navigate the 2011 season with only two pitchers, which made things dicey late in the season when sophomore ace Kenzie Fowler was out for six games late in the season because of a concussion.

Head coach Mike Candrea — as he was last offseason to no avail — is on the lookout for help from anywhere, including transfers from four-year schools and junior colleges.

Already, he is bringing in left-hander Kiley Shae Aldridge from Cabrillo High School in Lompoc, Calif. She should provide a softer-throwing contrast to right-handers Fowler and Shelby Babcock.

Candrea, the former head coach of the U.S. national team, could also use his international contacts.

“I may take a trip to Australia to see what’s coming up in the ranks,” he said Saturday after Oklahoma eliminated the Wildcats from an NCAA Super Regional

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Hallie Wilson/Photo submitted by Hallie Wilson to USA Softball

Arizona Wildcats softball coach Mike Candrea signed four players to national letters-of-intent this week, including a trio who play for the U.S. Junior Women’s National Team.

Those three are outfielder/first baseman Hallie Wilson, shortstop Shelby Pendley and catcher Chelsea Goodacre. They helped Team USA win the 18-under Pan American championship in August.

Candrea also added third baseman/outfielder Samantha Davis from Scottsdale Chaparral High School.

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Former UA linebacker Antonio Pierce, here celebrating the New York Giants' victory in Super Bowl XLII in Glendale, will have new duties in front of the camera this season.
Photo by John David Mercer, US Presswire

NOTE: This is part of the weekly “Nothing But The Notes” column at WildcatSportsReport.com, one of the partners in the TucsonCitizen.com Sports Network. For notes on basketball recruiting, incoming freshman guard Daniel Bejarano, sophomore big man Kyryl Natyazhko and more, check out the link at WildcatSportsReport.com.

Now-retired New York Giants linebacker Antonio Pierce announced last week he is joining ESPN as an analyst, yet another ex-Wildcat in a prominent TV role.

Tedy Bruschi joined ESPN after retiring last summer, former Suns general manager Steve Kerr will become a lead NBA game analyst for TNT next season, Glenn Parker is a college football analyst for Versus, and Joe Magrane works for the MLB Network.

Moreover, UA grad Dan Hicks is one of NBC’s announcing stars. Sean Elliott was at ESPN for a while; now he works on local San Antonio Spurs telecasts. Tom Tolbert was an NBA analyst with NBC, ABC and ESPN (he was part of the broadcasting team of the 2003 NBA Finals with Brad Nessler and Bill Walton) before becoming solely a radio personality in San Francisco.

Miles Simon, after his contract as an assistant Arizona basketball coach was not renewed in the summer of 2008, worked last season as a college basketball analyst for Fox Sports Net.

All in all, an impressive roster of ex-Cats in the TV biz.

Who’s your TV favorite? Anybody we missed? …

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Hallie Wilson has been considered one of the top leadoff hitters in California/Photo submitted by Hallie Wilson to USA Softball

Here are three more reasons why the future of Mike Candrea‘s Arizona softball program is bright: Hallie Wilson, Chelsea Goodacre and Shelby Pendley.

Those three players — who each will be high school seniors this fall and have committed to sign with the Wildcats, according to multiple reports — were selected Tuesday to the 17-member U.S. Junior National team. Forty-one players took part in the tryout camp in Chula Vista, Calif.

Wilson is a outfielder from North Tustin, Calif. She hit .432 as a junior at Foothill High School — the school that produced UA All-American Caitlin Lowe — after batting .526 as a sophomore.

Goodacre, a power-hitting catcher from Temecula, Calif., missed about six weeks of her junior season because of injury, but hit .507 in 21 games.

Pendley, from Rio Rancho, N.M., is a power-hitting shortstop/third baseman who hit .586 last season with 12 home runs — both marks ranked second in the New Mexico’s 5A classification. She also did some pitching for Rio Rancho High.

Wilson, Goodacre and Pendley will arrive at Arizona for the 2011-12 school year. In the meantime, Arizona has signed two players for next season — pitcher Shelby Babcock and shortstop Chelsea Suitos, who fill the roster spots of departed pitcher Sarah Akamine and shortstop K’Lee Arredondo.

The Wildcats have two known commitments from players who just completed their sophomore seasons — pitcher Nancy Bowling from Royal High in Simi Valley, Calif. (you can see a photo of her here at the Orange County Register) and shortstop Amanda Perez from Whittier (Calif.) Christian.

“It’s like a dream come true. It’s the school I always wanted to attend,” Perez told the Whittier Daily News last week. “As soon as they offered me, I didn’t have to wait.”

Bowling was at the tryout camp for the Junior National Team, but did not make the cut.

The U.S. Junior National team will compete at the III Pan American Softball Championship (18-and-under) from Aug. 6-15, in Bogota, Colombia. That event is a qualifier for the International Softball Federation IX Junior Women’s World Championship (19-and-under), which will be held in Cape Town, South Africa, from Dec. 6-17, 2011.

Stacy Iveson, the head coach at Yavapai College in Prescott, is an assistant coach for the Junior National team. Iveson is a Catalina High graduate, a former UA player and assistant coach, and the former head coach at Pima Community College.

The immediate pitching future of the Arizona softball team looks bright because of the addition of freshman Kenzie Fowler, but coach Mike Candrea already has worked to extend pitching dominance well into the decade, well past Fowler’s four-year span.

The Wildcats have commitments from arguably the two best sophomore pitchers in the state of California – Nancy Bowling of Royal High in Simi, and Bri Matthews from Mater Dei in Santa Ana.

If all goes well, they will arrive at Arizona for the 2013 season, when Fowler will be a senior and signee Shelby Babcock will be a junior.

Just like in men’s basketball, softball players are committing earlier and earlier. Arizona is one of the teams that is leading the trend.

Why? Mostly, because Candrea and his staff can.

Offering scholarships to players who are so young can be dicey and be something that backfires, but the Wildcats are dealing with elite recruits — the kind who are easier to evaluate and are usually highly motivated to continue to improve.

Candrea can’t talk about specific recruits, but I asked him Monday about the pros and cons of early commitments.

“You wonder how a kid who is a sophomore in high school really knows what they want to do and where they want to be,” Candrea said.

“But fortunately there are some kids who do their homework and they know. The fortunate thing about it is that it helps us because of the tradition we have. We feel pretty good about the future and some verbals we have gotten from kids.”

Matthews “is supposed to be the best 14-year-old pitching prospect in the state,” according to a story last summer in the Los Angeles Times.

Bowling was selected the softball freshman of the year by CalHiSports.com after a season in which she posted a 0.43 ERA, striking out 301 and walking just 44, in 180.1 innings.

Even at such a young age, both pitched last summer in the 18-and-under ASA Gold Championships — the top tournament for travel ball teams — for the Orange County Batbusters. The Batbusters are one of the storied teams in club softball and have long been a pipeline of talent for Arizona.

Arizona has two known commitments from high school juniors — outfielder Hallie Wilson from Foothill High in Orange County and power-hitting catcher Chelsea Goodacre of Temecula Valley (Calif.) High School.

“Right now, it’s kind of nice to look at your roster and say that we’re done with 2010 (recruiting) and we’re done with 2011 and almost done with 2012,” Candrea said. “That kind of sets you up for a while.

“On the other hand, you don’t know if that kid is going to continue to grow. A lot of questions on that.”