Softball WCC Columnist Jeff Faraudo

WCC Hall Of Honor: Cindy Ball-Malone

Twenty years before Shohei Ohtani slugged 34 home runs and won 15 games with a 2.33 earned run average as a pitcher for the Los Angeles Angels last summer, Pacific softball had its own rare two-way star.

Cindy Ball led the Tigers with a .352 batting average and hit 11 home runs as a senior in 2002. She also compiled 28 pitching victories and six saves while fashioning an 0.94 ERA.

Brian Kolze, who coached Ball at Pacific and is beginning his 31st season as head coach at the Stockton school, didn’t hesitate when asked about the comparison. “That’s pretty much what she was — you hit the nail on the head,” he said. 

“Oh my, she was probably the greatest two-way player we’ve had. She had a tremendous impact everyday in the lineup, everyday in the circle.”

Now married with four kids and a successful head coach at Central Florida, Cindy Ball-Malone is Pacific’s 2023 selection to the West Coast Conference Hall of Honor. She and inductees from the league’s nine other schools — including Loyola Marymount softball alum Sam Fischer — will be recognized at the University Credit Union WCC Basketball Tournament next month in Los Angeles.

She got the news from Kolze, her old coach.

"I was like, what?” said Ball-Malone, 43. “Very shocked and obviously just honored. I know Sam Fischer I are the first softball players to go in. That’s amazing, really cool.”

Ball-Malone’s credentials are compelling. She was a two-time NFCA All-America (2001-02) and finished her Pacific career as the program leader in career innings pitched  (883.1), wins (91), saves (10), strikeouts (761), shutouts (46) and RBI (111). She had a career ERA of 1.20 and hit 19 home runs.

She had had her jersey No. 9 retired by the school and was voted into the Pacific Athletics Hall of Fame in 2014.

But her four seasons at Pacific were not all about personal statistics. The Tigers qualified for the NCAA Tournament three times during her career — in 1999, 2001 and ’02. 

The ’01 team won a program-record 50 games and missed reaching the Women’s College World Series by a single game, losing to Stanford with the bid on the line. Ball-Malone was 33-9 that season and earned her first of two Pitcher of the Year awards in the Big West Conference, where the Tigers competed in those years.

Kolze said Ball-Malone was the only senior on the team in 2002 and took seriously the responsibility to lead her younger teammates. “One great thing you could say about her, she did a great job of leading by example,” he said. “She never asked anybody to do anything she wasn’t already doing herself.”

Although it was two decades ago and she now leads her own program as coach, Ball-Malone has warm and vivid memories of her playing career.

“I can still remember things like it was yesterday,” she said. “The biggest thing was the bond that we grew as a team, being able to accomplish what we did. A small school facing teams that had way more resources than us. And we were able to compete. Nothing mattered more than playing our best on the field.”

Ball-Malone grew up in Camarillo, Calif., in Ventura County, where her friend and high school teammate in volleyball, basketball and softball was Jessica Mendoza, who went on to star at Stanford and on the U.S. Olympic team a the 2004 Games in Athens. These days, Mendoza works as a major-league baseball analyst for ESPN.

“Just being great friends off the field, we were both very competitive on the field,” Ball-Malone said. That included a series of matchups between Pacific and Stanford, many of them in the NCAA Tournament.

In 2001, Ball-Malone got the best of her friend, pitching a two-hitter in a 2-0 win over the Cardinal in the tournament. Later the same day, Ball was back in the circle for a game that decided a berth to the WCWS.

“Coach had belief in me and gave me the ball again,” she recalled. Stanford scratched out a single run in the first inning, then Ball-Malone ran into trouble in the fourth.

She and Kolze both recall a controversial call at third base that might have precluded a big inning. Instead, with the bases loaded, the left-handed Mendoza came to the plate.

“I was trying to walk her with the bases loaded. I threw the ball in the right-handed batter’s box and she still hit it out,” Ball-Malone said. The grand slam changed everything and Stanford went on to win 9-1, securing the WCWS bid and sending the Tigers home.

There were so many other great moments. Ball-Malone pitched a no-hitter against Colorado State as a sophomore and stuck out 14 batters in seven innings against Evansville as a senior.

In one memorable game in 2000, she pitched all 17 innings of a 4-3 win over Cal State Northridge. More than two decades later, as a coach, Ball-Malone said she’d never allow one of her players to throw so many pitches in a game. 

But it was a different time, and Kolze said he didn’t consider taking out his ace. “Back then you you never had a second thought about taking her out,” he said. “She would have killed me if I did.”

Ball-Malone completed her college playing career in 2002, then spent a few years playing professionally, including in Italy. Beyond that, she said, “I never thought I was going to be a coach.”

But Kolze asked her to come work with the Tigers pitchers. She accepted the job and worked toward her Masters degree while coaching. “I loved it,” she said.

Eventually, she landed the head coaching position at Boise State, and after the Broncos won the 2018 Mountain West Conference championship she was hired away by Central Florida.

Ball-Malone’s UCF team won 49 games last season and advanced to the NCAA Super Regionals for the first time. With all of her position players back from a year ago, the Knights were picked as the favorite to repeat as the American Athletic Conference champion in a poll of the league’s coaches.

UCF will travel to California in March to play five games over a three-day stretch that lines up perfectly with the WCC Tournament. As a result, she and husband Robert will make the trip 260-mile trip from Fullerton to Las Vegas for the Saturday morning brunch celebrating the 10 Hall of Honor inductees before she rejoins her team for a game that evening.