PLAYOFF PROFILES : Softball Grew on Blumfield

Cara Blumfield’s early take on softball was not favorable. “I had seen [recreation girls’] softball played and I wasn’t interested,” she said. “It didn’t seem like fun.”

Blumfield was a youth-league baseball player at the time, a standout infielder in the West Hills Baseball organization. The game with the bigger ball and underhand pitching just didn’t compare.

“In baseball you hit a ball and chances are someone’s going to field it,” Blumfield said. “In the softball games I saw, balls were dropped all the time.”

By the start of eighth grade, Blumfield had discovered the higher competition of club softball and altered her view. These days she anchors the Calabasas High infield as a freshman shortstop. The Coyotes (13-5-1) will play today at La Salle in a Southern Section Division V first-round playoff game.

Even as a rookie, Blumfield is her team’s best player. The switch-hitting leadoff hitter leads Calabasas with a .328 batting average, 10 stolen bases and a .951 fielding percentage.

“I really believe she’ll develop into a Division I [college softball] player,” said Coach Debbie Thomas, whose team finished second in the Frontier League. “She makes the plays no one else can.”

Complicating Blumfield’s choices on the road to college is that she is also a standout guard on the Calabasas girls’ basketball team and lists basketball as her favorite sport.

“I enjoy playing [basketball] more because the game is faster,” said Blumfield, who averaged 12.9 points, 5.2 assists and 3.6 steals last season.

Thomas believes it’s likely the 5-foot-4 Blumfield will have to choose between the sports by her junior year if she is to land a scholarship. Blumfield already has cast aside club soccer.

Despite a draining schedule of academics and high school and club practices and games, Blumfield said she feels little to no stress when pondering her future.

“As I get older I’m only going to get better,” she said. “I wonder how I’ll do when everyone is younger than me instead of the other way around.”