At times during her carousel softball journey that saw her play for a plethora of teams, the thought of stepping away from the game entered Eudora alumna Kira Baker’s mind.
Coaches fighting on the field and even a heart attack suffered by the coach that led to one team’s dissolution were just two of the challenges Baker encountered.
But one thing kept her coming back and fighting through the turmoil to continue: her love for the game.
“But after that, there were enough good moments,” Baker said. “There were good moments that I, like, I still wanted to play. ”
Now pitching at Baker University, Baker has succeeded at levels that she did not reach while in high school.
Baker has made six appearances in her freshman season with three starts. She has amassed a 5-0 record and allowed no earned runs through 28 and a third innings pitched. She has also produced 56 strikeouts and averages over 13 per game.
However, it was not always consistent domination from Baker. In fact, it was uncertain whether she would even get the chance to further her softball career after making the jump from the recreational level to the competitive level at a young age.
“We could not find a team that would take me. I was not good back then,” Baker said.
Eventually, a team did take a chance on her and helped her develop. But after aging out of that squad, what followed was a stretch of teams that struggled with consistency.
“Towards the beginning there, on that really, really bad team that had the coaches fighting, there was a little bit of questioning during that,” Baker said.
As her career progressed toward high school, stability became more prevalent and Baker’s skills began to improve even more.
As her high school career at Eudora began, her freshman season was spent predominantly on junior varsity because of the multiple senior pitchers in front of her at the time on varsity.
However, her play almost instantly caught the eye of head coach Bill Finucane. He knew quickly that Baker was in line to make a lasting impact on Eudora softball.
“She could pitch, she was a strong player and we knew that she was going to be a big part of the softball program,” Finucane said. “It was just a matter of kind of letting Kira develop her own strength and style as it relates to high school softball. She did a good job freshman year and was ready to roll on varsity for her sophomore year.”
But her sophomore year never got the chance to start. Her breakout campaign was set to take place in spring 2020 but, as was the case with sports around the globe at the same time, COVID-19 hit. It shut down high school sports in Kansas, and Baker lost her chance to continue her development on the field.
Despite the frustration of a full season taken away by unforeseen circumstances, Baker began to look at the possible benefit from the stoppage.
“It was just very frustrating,” Baker said. “It was a lost chance, lost time. But in some ways, I think it was a good thing. It gave me time to grow.”
She began to focus more on the mental side of pitching. Baker attended pitching lessons once a week, but sometimes the focus would not just be solely on mechanics or development of on-the-mound skills.
Sometimes for nearly 40 minutes out of hour-long sessions, she and her coach focused on the pitching mentality needed for success. Those talks helped improve her composure in difficult situations and gain more knowledge on how to deal with specific types of hitters.
Coming into her junior season, Finucane expressed to Baker that the team would have the chance to go as far as she could take them. Her improved composure was something that caught his eye.
“Compared to her junior year, [she had] tremendous growth in regards to her ability to handle different situations, her strength as a player and her ability to handle situations mentally,” Finucane said. “From the first game of her junior year, she handled all of that just extremely well. In her two years for junior and senior year, when things got difficult either because of game situations or maybe she wouldn’t have her best day, she could figure out how to change things and come out on top.”
Led by Baker, the Cardinals would see historic success over her final two seasons. After a trip to the quarterfinals of the state tournament in the 2021 season, the Cardinals captured their first softball state championship in 2022.
That season went down in history for not only the program but for Baker specifically. One of those accomplishments came in the form of the career strikeout record, broken in only two full seasons on varsity.
Now pitching at Baker University, she continues to succeed.
It was announced last week that Baker was named the Heart of America Pitcher of theWeek after a dominant weekend.
At the 2023 Spring NAIA Invite, she went 3-0 with two starts and saved her best performance for last against Saint Mary-of-the-Woods when she pitched a 14-strikeout perfect game.
Fellow freshman pitcher Rachel Gray said she was not at all surprised with the outcome.
“I was keeping the scorebook and so I knew the whole time, but you can’t say anything because you don’t want to jinx it,” Gray said. “I was extremely proud of her and just how hard she worked. It didn’t shock me at all.”
The perfect game proved to be the first of Baker’s career, an accomplishment that had been in grasp multiple times before, but just out of reach.
“I’ve been trying for that for a long time, and I’ve always been one or two batters off,” Baker said. “To finally get that and against a team that is very good, it was an amazing feeling. It was really a moment of the hard work that we’ve had in practice coming together, and I think that was the difference. One of the seniors on the team, she and I have a saying, 1% better. That’s all you have to do, 1% better each day.”
Reach reporter Nathan Swaffar at [email protected].
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