Kylie Chung is a 2021 pitcher/utility player for the Firecrackers Rico/Weil 18U team and almost halfway through her senior year at Westlake High School in Westlake Village, California.
She maintains a 4.8 GPA and is on track to be a Valedictorian at her school despite being currently enrolled in six AP classes, already having taken six AP and eight honors classes!
Kylie has been playing softball for 12 years and is in her sixth year playing trave ball. She was leading the prestigious CIF-Southern Section in ERA with a 0.33 ERA when Westlake’s season came to a premature end because of the Coronavirus shutdown.
As a junior she had a great season that saw her earn Cal-Hi Sports 1st Team All-State honors and emerge as an Extra Elite 100 standout player.
Recently, she committed to Stanford and details here how that that come to be…
I am excited to finally announce that I have decided to continue my academic and athletic career at Stanford University! Thank you to everyone who made this possible for me! Go Card❤️❤️🌲 #fearthetree @StanfordSball pic.twitter.com/gZKSEhzGf0
— kylie (@kyliechung12) November 30, 2020
*****
I eat, sleep, softball, repeat.
My life, in essence, is a pink glittery shirt for little kids and softball moms alike, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
My life with softball began when I was 5 and it was one of those sports that all the girls played so I played on a team with a couple of my friends from school. I wish I could tell my 5-year-old self that the green itchy socks go away as you get older because I didn’t have the typical “I fell in love with the game from the start” story as most people do.
I just played it because my friends did, and I wanted to be with my friends, so I continued to play.
When most of my friends had quit softball altogether, as they fell victim to soccer, I still continued to play softball because soccer just wasn’t it for me. My first year in 8U, I decided I wanted to pitch because I was under the impression that all the cool girls pitched, so in order to really become cool, pitching was a must.
And I wasn’t really that good at all.
I made the All-Star team my first year just so I had something to do over the summer, and it really dawned on me that you had to be good to play, as I sat my 8-year-old little butt on the bench spitting out seeds almost every game.
I was actually so bored with myself on the team that I lied to my coach and told him that my dad wanted me batting from the left side just so I could bring some excitement in my life; it didn’t end up sticking, but I can still swing it from the left side.
I wasn’t really excited with the whole softball thing at all; I mean, I never played… but I still remember the moment I fell in love with the game.
That year, still 8-years-old, my coach put me in to pinch hit and I sat there on the bench, so surprised that my seeds dropped from my mouth. I walked up to the plate, with one of the cool girl’s neon yellow bats and swung at the first pitch I got because I was so excited to actually get an at bat.
It was a line drive out to left center.
Under normal circumstances, that would be a pretty decent hit, but when I played in 8U we had four outfielders, so I ran back to the dugout after. My coach smiled at me and gave me a high five, and said, “That was a nice swing, kid. You’ll get a hit next game,” meaning I would actually get to play the next game.
Realizing how my face lit up after playing the game, it really hit me that I absolutely loved to be on the dirt. It is still my favorite out I’ve made to this day.
With all of the positives, come the negatives.
In one of my favorite TV shows, a character says that “regression to the mean” means that life can never be too good or too bad and will eventually always even itself out; I feel like I’ve had my fair share.
As a pitcher, I didn’t see the mound a whole lot my first three years of travel ball with the ACES; I mainly pitched in the pool play games and none of the championships. My coach told me that I was a good second pitcher behind one of my best friends, who now is at the University of Utah, but not a P1.
It stung a little bit feeling like I wasn’t championship material but I still loved the game though; I love playing first base and still being able to hit and run for myself.
It wasn’t until my freshman year of high school, my first varsity game, that I realized that I could be one of the better pitchers in the country, when I struck out 17 in a no-hitter against my dad’s alma mater.
From an early age I was developed as a first baseman because not pitching led me to believe that I could never make it as a pitcher, so when my high school coach, Bob Creamer, told me after that game, “Keep working on your stuff, I want to see you on TV someday.” I took it to heart.
I worked really hard because I really wanted to fulfill my dream of playing on TV one day. When I couldn’t drive, I would wake my mom up at 5 in the morning to take me to the gym before school, and then to practice after school, to then go home and do my homework, to then go to sleep and do it all over again.
I even picked up water polo my sophomore year of high school to strengthen myself and I have no regrets.
Despite my hard work and long days, my recruiting journey didn’t go as planned.
I wasn’t really being scouted by Power 5 schools on September 1st of my junior year. Even though I was performing both in high school and in travel, I wasn’t on anyone’s radar because I was battling three back-to-back to-back injuries, which kept my true potential from being realized.
I had interest from some schools, but I knew that I wanted a school that was going to challenge me both in the classroom and on the field because I had been raised my whole life to exceed my limits in both settings. I loved the game and I wanted to continue to play where my love for the game could only grow.
Fall of my junior year was when I started to catch some eyes, both on the mound and at the plate. I led my team in almost all of the batting numbers and the fall of 2019 was my last full season with the seniors who I had played with for as long as I can remember.
One of my last games of the fall was a game that I really remember. Playing against Sean Brashear’s top Firecrackers team, my ACES team battled with a sea of college coaches in the stands. We eventually were walked off 2-1, but I remember loving the feeling of a full crowd and with all eyes on me at the mound; I had never really experienced it before, but I dreamed of playing on a huge stage.
This is where the doors to recruiting really opened for me.
I had attended a plethora of camps from 8th grade to junior year, but Stanford’s in January of 2020 was my favorite of the ones I had attended. Being able to learn directly from the coaching staff and understanding their methods, I grew to quickly love the way they saw and taught the game, even though it was from a short experience.
Scroll down to see more about Kylie’s amazing softball journey culminating in her recent commitment to the Cardinal!
