Softball WCC Columnist Jeff Faraudo

WCC Hall Of Honor: Sam Fischer

Tairia Flowers is the softball coach at LMU these days, but in 2012 she was the skipper for Cal State Northridge when the Matadors visited the Lions for a doubleheader.

The game plan that day revolved around how to pitch to LMU star slugger Sam Fischer. Flowers had a pretty good idea what could happen if her pitcher threw anything close to the strike zone when Fischer was at the plate.

“This is what I remember: We were intentionally/unintentionally walking her,” said Flowers, whose pitcher quickly went to a 3-0 count against Fischer in the first inning of the opener. “My catcher and pitcher were calling the game together and decided to just throw it up and in, so it didn’t look completely on purpose.”

Oops. That turned out to be a mistake.

“We missed and she hit is so far, so high over the fence,” Flowers recalled. “From then on, I said, `We’re not even even playing around with it. Just put her on.’ ”

Fischer, who is Loyola Marymount’s 2023 inductee into the West Coast Conference Hall of Honor, hasn’t forgotten the occasion.

“I remember that day like it was yesterday,” she said. “It was my first at-bat of the day. I hit a home run and she walked me the rest of the day. I was 1-for-1 with seven walks. It was so crazy because I definitely was a swinger. But it was such a compliment.”

Fischer said winning a place in the WCC Hall of Honor is the ultimate compliment. “It was one of the things I had no idea this was even an idea,” Fischer said. “I was just stunned. I’m so honored . . . I’m thrilled.”

Fischer’s senior season put her over the top. As Flowers discovered, even giving Fischer a pitch to hit that season was a fool’s errand. Her statistics from 2012 read like they’re from a video game.

Fischer batted .492 with a .665 on-base percentage, meaning she reached base safely two-thirds of the time over the course of an entire season. She scored 64 runs, drove in 59, hit 23 home runs and assembled a 1.156 slugging percentage. And, oh yes, she walked 61 times.

Each one of those numbers set or tied an LMU single-season record.

“She was phenomenal,” said Flowers, whose resume includes playing for the 2004 U.S. Olympic softball team that won a gold medal at the Athens Games. “She could hit strikes and balls. She was disciplined, but she could make you pay if it was something close and out of the zone.”

Fischer, now 32, still can’t really explain how she stayed locked in at the plate for so long.

“It’s one of those things I’m going to think about for the rest of my life,” she said. “I was in the zone for three to four months. Everything felt effortless. Realistically, it was an accumulation of everything I’d done my whole life.

“But it got to the point of throw me the pitch and I’ll hit it. It was so great. Everything was kind of coming together. If that was my last year of softball it would have been amazing because I had that season.”

Just the fact that Fischer wound up at Loyola was something of a happy accident. She was a high school sophomore in Simi Valley, Calif., when she attended a showcase tournament in Arizona for young prospects hoping to gain notice from college recruiters.

The late Gary Ferrin, who was the Lions coach, attended the event but went to the wrong field, looking for another player. Instead, he saw Fischer, a 15-year-old shortstop, and apparently envisioned good things. She got wind the coach from LMU was interested.

“Cool,” she recalled thinking. “What’s LMU? I’d never heard of it. He wasn’t supposed to be there, but I’m a big believer in signs.” And when it was time, Fischer signed with the Lions.

The experience at LMU was everything she hoped it would be, and her career body of work was impressive. The WCC didn’t officially begin sponsoring softball until 2014, so the Lions played in the Pacific Coast Softball Conference, which also included Saint Mary’s, Santa Clara, and San Diego.

Fischer was first-team All-PCSC four straight years, co-Player of the Year for the Coastal Division as a sophomore and Player of the Year for the division as a senior. Not playing in a big-time conference didn’t prevent her from securing big-time honors as she was named second-team All-American in 2012.

She finished her time at LMU with a slew of career program records: batting average (.387), runs scored (184), RBI (172), doubles (52), home runs (65), walks (127), on-base percentage (.494) and slugging percentage (.786). She was inducted into the LMU Sports Hall of Fame in 2019 and has had her uniform No. 52 retired.

It turned out 2012 was not Fischer’s last season. Not by a long shot.

She made the U.S. National team in 2012, ’14 and 15 and the “B” team in ‘16, and got the chance to play in two World Championships and four World Cup tournaments. But it wasn’t an entirely satisfying time.

To the disappointment of many, softball was dropped from the Olympics in 2012 and ’16, depriving Fischer of her potential chance to play on the world’s biggest stage. Fischer admits it was never a sure thing she would land spot on the roster for the 2012 London Games, because some veterans from 2008 might have opted to return.

“It was never a goal. It was a dream and it seemed out of reach,” she recalled. “Then in 2012 maybe it was more than a dream. One place I wanted to go my whole life was London, so that was a real downer.”

Fischer now lives in Arizona with her husband of six and-a-half years, Kevin Cooke. She jokes that her legal name is the same as the late singer and songwriter. “I was already familiar with his music,” she said, “then I became Sam Cooke.”

She continues to play professionally for 100 Club of Arizona in a non-profit league called Athletes Unlimited. The outfit, headquartered in New York, also sponsors women’s volleyball, basketball and lacrosse teams, and softball will hold its fourth season this summer, equipped with a TV deal from ESPN and with all games played in the Chicago area.

Fischer said she hopes to play for a couple more seasons then begin a family and perhaps transition into a front-office role with the organization. Already she is chair of the softball players executive committee, and she also does camps and clinics for young players.

Now more than a decade removed from the school she’d never heard of as a teen-ager, Fischer hasn’t been a stranger to her alma mater. She served as emcee for a fundraising dinner a year ago and Flowers said she was a hit. “She’s so personable . . . my players love her.”

Fischer says the feeling is mutual: “I loved LMU.”