Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1105789
56 MAY 2019 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED ND SPORTS BY TODD D. BURLAGE I n athletics and even business, elite talent is often found more through timing and surprise than it is through recruiting and reputation. Such was the case for Deanna Gumpf in the summer of 2011 when the veteran Notre Dame softball coach lucked into an unexpected meeting with a 13-year-old named Caitlyn Brooks. Brooks — then a budding soft- ball star from Burbank, Calif., and now a Notre Dame senior infielder/ pitcher — was along for the ride with a friend for a Notre Dame summer softball camp, ignorantly bliss that this trip would eventually map her softball career and perhaps her entire life. "My friend got me to go there for the weekend," Brooks recalled, "and once I was there I loved it." Ironically and perhaps fatefully, Brooks capped an impressive camp weekend with her first-ever fence- clearing home run, a blast that trav- eled about 220 feet out of Melissa Cook Stadium, home of the Irish soft- ball team. The shot heard around the camp served as an unforgettable memory for a talented eighth-grader and started some relationship roots with a college coach. "She was so awesome," Gumpf said of meeting Brooks for the first time. "She had a great time, and we just totally hit it off. We followed her from that moment on." Gumpf closely tracked while Brooks moved into high school and became one of the top players in talent-rich California, dominating opponents and twice earning Max Preps All-America honors out of Bur- bank High School. Still intrigued with Notre Dame, Brooks returned to South Bend as a high school sophomore for a visit in 2012 during a Michigan football weekend. The campus atmosphere left "Cait" spellbound, and ulti- mately Notre Dame-bound, when she accepted Gumpf 's scholarship offer during that recruiting weekend. "The atmosphere, the beauty of the architecture," Brooks said, "the feeling that you get when you're on campus is definitely unmatched by any other college." Brooks finished her stellar prep ca- reer as a member of the elite 80-win, 1,000-strikeout club as a pitcher, and with a batting average that hovered around .500 for four seasons. "Caitlyn is a coach's dream," then- Burbank coach Nicole Drabecki said in a feature story for The Los Angeles Times. "She is a winner and a great leader." Those traits followed Brooks to Notre Dame, where she has become a team leader on the field and a mentor behind the scenes, where camarade- rie and success are often quietly built. The Irish (26-14 overall and 9-6 in league play through April 15) remain essentially the lone team in the At- lantic Division of the ACC with any legitimate chance of chasing down perennial power Florida State for a division title. "The culture on our team is very family oriented," Brooks said. "I just wanted to make that a focus this year, invite the younger girls over to kind of hang out and be someone that they can look up to and hopefully create a culture that carries on every year." On the field, Brooks' final year at Notre Dame might also be consid- ered her breakout season. Brooks, a gifted hitter and infielder — and spot pitcher for the Irish — has started in every game the last three campaigns and all but one during her career. But that wealth of game experience surprisingly brought some diminishing returns. Brooks hit .335 with 13 doubles and 11 home runs in 54 games as a freshman in 2016. In 57 games as a junior last sea- son, her production slipped to a .272 average, with two doubles and nine home runs. But through just 40 games this sea- son, Brooks carried a career-best .411 batting average with 16 home runs — also a new single-season high — and 40 RBI. "The biggest difference is that she has taken the pressure off herself a little bit, and she's just out there hav- ing fun," Gumpf said. "When she changed her mentality, I just think things got easier for her." Brooks will walk the stage in May with her degree in film, television and theater complete. From there, she wants to travel, study abroad and perhaps return to Notre Dame for graduate school at Softball Senior Caitlyn Brooks Is Having A Career Year Through 40 games as of April 15, Brooks led the Fighting Irish in batting average (.411), home runs (16) and RBI (40). She had also made five appearances in the pitching circle and posted a 2.74 ERA. PHOTO COURTESY FIGHTING IRISH MEDIA