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Kenzie Fowler's talents were on full display last month against Sierra Vista Buena: a one-hitter, 17 strikeouts and a game-winning single in the eighth inning of a 1-0 Canyon del Oro victory.
Jim Davis/Arizona Daily Star 2008
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Kenzie Fowler
• School: Canyon del Oro High School
• Sport: Softball
• Age: 16
• Year: Junior
• Position: Pitcher
• Season stats: 16-1 record, 0.36 ERA, .500 batting average, six home runs
Did you know
Kenzie Fowler was a first-team high school All-American as a freshman and named to the U.S. Junior National team. In October 2006, she verbally committed to Arizona, where she will play for family friend and Wildcats coach Mike Candrea. She led CDO to the Class 4A-I state championship last May and was the Star's Southern Arizona Player of the Year for the second straight season.

Sports

Opinion by Greg Hansen : CDO softball star may be best in nation

And she's maybe 90% back after lifesaving surgery
Opinion by Greg Hansen
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 04.16.2008
Bundrick-Enterline Field is hidden behind a grove of trees, separated from the Canyon del Oro High School campus by a wash and accessed by a winding dirt road.
It is, according to the National Fastpitch Coaches Association, the nation's second-best high school softball facility, and why not? The green-and-gold outfield fence is artfully decorated with tributes to 24 ex-Dorados who have excelled in college softball.
Sarah Beeson, Stanford.
Kady Garrick, Louisville.
Callista Balko, Arizona.
It gets your attention.
And, of course, there are banners to represent the 1992, 2001, 2005 and 2007 state championships.
Bundrick-Enterline Field is alive on game day, even on a game day in which attendance is officially announced at 73. The "fifth inning stretch" features the public address guy dancing behind the backstop while spectators bang on cowbells. Sponsors make available free caps, pizzas and T-shirts.
Even in a non-conference game against Glendale Cactus, starting lineups of each team jog to the foul line and are then introduced. The epic Whitney Houston national anthem is played.
You almost expected a flyover and a ceremonial first pitch.
Instead, Monday's first pitch was delivered by the best-known high school softball player in this or any state. Kenzie Fowler, career record 72-6.
Fowler's first three pitches, to Cactus' Hattie Fullmer, made an ear-turning sound — Thwomp! Thwomp! Thwomp! — as they popped into catcher Rose Magaddino's mitt.
In short order, Fowler had struck out the side.
In a quick 75 minutes, Fowler and the Dorados beat the perennial powerhouse from Glendale 2-1, and only a few words were needed to describe the day's activities:
Fowler, a junior, pitched a one-hitter, struck out 15 and hit a game-winning home run.
She genuinely sounds more impressed by her intrepid teammates — there are six freshmen and two sophomores on the varsity roster, five of them starters — than by her .500 batting average, her 0.36 ERA and her 16-1 record.
"We are babies," she says with a smile. "We are so young, but we've been playing so well. I'm really impressed."
To her teammates and CDO classmates, the thick 4-inch scar that runs laterally across Kenzie's right collarbone is old news. They talk about winning back-to-back state titles and they talk about whatever teenagers talk about.
They have moved on, happy faces on a powerhouse softball team, putting behind them Kenzie's seven harrowing hours on the operating table, four surgeries and 12 days in intensive care after surgeons discovered and then unclogged a vein near her heart. And, oh, yes, removed a rib.
"You know how teenagers are, the way they wear their clothes; you can see her scar all the time," says Kenzie's mother, Kelly Fowler, one of CDO's assistant coaches. "It's probably no big deal to them, but I don't need to be reminded that often."
It has been 10 months since the emergency surgery saved her daughter's life, and yet Kelly Fowler shakes her head and says, "I'm still on pins and needles."
Kenzie's recuperative powers are astonishing.
She was unable to play for the USA Junior National Team in a summer series in the Netherlands and did not resume limited pitching until January. CDO coach Amy Swiderski was cautious, subbing Kenzie in the rotation for the first month of the season.
Had she chosen, or been ordered, to sit this season out, it would have been understandable. Instead, she is a force. In prep softball, she is The Force.
"She's probably back to 90 percent," Swiderski says. "She's such a competitor; she hasn't backed off a bit. Her batting has been tremendous."
Batting? Who said anything about batting?
While going through extensive physical therapy before the season — she now goes twice a week — Kenzie was not permitted to pitch. So she spent more time in the batting cages. It shows. She hit .393 with seven home runs as a sophomore. This year she has been over .500 all season, and Monday's homer, a two-run game-winner that followed an earlier double, was her sixth.
She has become, at once, the state's most feared pitcher and hitter and has established a national reputation. As a 2006 freshman she was named to the coveted Louisville Slugger-National Fastpitch Coaches Association All-America first team. Now she is on the cover of Rise magazine, an ESPN-produced publication that covers high school sports.
Ten months after life-threatening surgery, she seems to be happier than ever.
"My endurance isn't quite the same yet, and I'm a little more sore after pitching than I used to get," she says. "But after what I've been through, I just appreciate playing a lot more. I'm more relaxed and I'm having more fun than I've ever had."
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