COURTNEY STEWART/Daily Bruin Stacey
Nuveman may well leave UCLA as the Bruins’ best softball
player ever.
By Andrew Borders
Daily Bruin Reporter
Stacey Nuveman has an Olympic gold medal. She owns the
school’s career records in batting average, RBIs and home
runs. She is on pace to top the list of games played, runs scored
and hits by the end of next year.
You’d think that the junior catcher would carry herself
with a swagger, knowing that opposing pitchers feel the way most
students do when they see an F on a paper when they see she’s
in the box.
You’d think that someone who hits home runs that land not
in the trees beyond the outfield fence but rather in some San
Fernando Valley pool would grab the attention and awe that a local
version of Mark McGwire would.
But not so with Nuveman. Walking in the Morgan Center one day,
she approaches not with the pounding feet of a power hitter but
with the clicking of flip-flops.
Olympic gold medalist Stacey Nuveman? True, but she’d
rather be known as UCLA student Stacey Nuveman.
“My biggest respect for Stacey is her attitude and her
demeanor at a time when you usually see anything but a humble,
gracious athlete,” said Washington Head Coach Teresa Wilson.
“There are a lot of players you love to hate because of their
cockiness, and Stacey’s not one of them. I respect that kid,
and I don’t say that about everybody.”
And that was after a game in which Nuveman homered to beat
Wilson’s team.
True, she set the school’s record for home runs in a
career ““ one month into her second season.
True, she crushed the UCLA mark for home runs in a season by 10,
and in only her sophomore year.
But when she’s not tattooing softballs, she goes to the
movies, gets her hair done, and visits the orthodontist. Sounds
just like any other student, outside of the jaw-dropping home runs,
anyway.
Nuveman had several choices when it came time to select a
school. Arizona, Michigan, Notre Dame, Stanford and UCLA became a
contest of Michigan versus UCLA in the Nuveman sweepstakes, and the
Bruins won out.
“It appeared to us that it was very close between us and
Michigan. There was a real hard push to get her,” UCLA Head
Coach Sue Enquist said.
Strangely enough, like many students at UCLA, not even Nuveman
could crack the doors of the mysterious Stanford admissions
department.
“I don’t think I would have gone to Stanford,
honestly. At that point, they were the whipping post of the Pac-10.
But it was disappointing to me because I didn’t have the
opportunity to say, “˜No, thank you.’ They had to tell
me that. And that was kind of a shot to my pride,” she
said.
Although Nuveman has worn number 33 since her recreational
league days because she was a fan of a Bruin alum, the NBA’s
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, she says she wasn’t sold on UCLA all
along.
“Some people can honestly say, “˜Yeah, I always
wanted to be a Bruin.” I liked UCLA, but it wasn’t that
I had any real stock in UCLA. It was my last recruiting trip of the
five, and I just got the feeling that I belonged. After getting a
tour of the campus and seeing all that UCLA had to offer, I knew
that there was nowhere else I wanted to spend five years of my
life.”
But like Abdul-Jabbar (then Lew Alcindor), who left UCLA as
perhaps the best ever to play basketball in Westwood, Nuveman will
most likely hold the same distinction in her sport.
Accenting her unique ability, Nuveman said that she’d
rather be compared to power-hitting catcher Mike Piazza than the
more offensive-minded McGwire. Senior pitcher Courtney Dale, who
has thrown to Nuveman since they arrived in 1997, recognized the
talent needed to be a proficient catcher.
“She has to know how to work with each pitcher that
she’s catching. She’s really smart behind the plate,
reading the hitters and knowing what their weaknesses are,”
Dale said.
Nuveman’s talent has not gone unnoticed within the Pac-10.
She hit 20 home runs her freshman year and 31 her sophomore year.
Though she took the 2000 season off to train and tour with the
Olympic softball team, her competition at the collegiate level has
not forgotten her. Instead, they’ve often raised the white
flag when she’s at the plate, giving her 68 walks in 64 games
so far this year, and not because the 6-foot catcher has a small
strike zone. That is compared with 61 walks in 69 games in 1999,
and 33 walks in 63 games her freshman year.
But Enquist expected more limited chances at the plate for
Nuveman.
“Across the board, more people are throwing to her than we
thought they would. Now, as the stakes go up, I see more
intentional walks and teams throwing around her,” Enquist
said.
Still, Nuveman makes the best of the home run opportunities
taken away from her.
“I haven’t seen the same pitch selection that I saw
before. Everyone starts to figure you out and say,
“˜We’re not going to mess with her,'” she
said. “Everyone asks me, “˜Don’t you hate getting
walked?’ I say my on base percentage is getting better.
It’s better than grounding out or striking out. I’m
creating things for our offense. Walk me a hundred times, I
don’t really care.”
With her 19 home runs this year, Nuveman is 16 away from
breaking the NCAA career record of 85. But as her modesty would
indicate, she doesn’t consider the mark a must have.
“It’s always nice to leave your name in the books,
but by no means is that something that I’m going to focus on
for the rest of this year or even next year. Hopefully it happens,
but if it doesn’t, I feel like I’ve done my duty and
left my legacy on the game,” she said.
After this season, Nuveman has one more year at UCLA. When she
finishes the 2002 season, she’ll be 24 years old after
spending six years in Westwood. She redshirted the 1998 season
because of the NCAA-imposed postseason ban on UCLA, and the 2000
season for the Olympics. Her absence has given her the added
challenge of relating to teammates who are as much as
four-and-a-half years younger.
“Our lives are really different. I feel really old being
around 18-year-olds when I’m 23. But I think I’m good
at relating to them, no matter what the age situation, because on
the Olympic team I was the youngest,” she said.
Nuveman may win another gold medal in the 2004 Olympics. She
could collect two more Women’s College World Series titles
before she is done at UCLA. Even if that happens, she’d
rather you remember her in other ways.
“It’s not about how many hits you have or any of
your athletic stats; it’s about what kind of person you
are,” she said. “When it’s all said and done, if
my career was over tomorrow, I’d hope people would say that I
was a competitor, but more importantly that I was a good person and
I played the game straight up. I gave it all I had, but it
wasn’t my life, I had balance in my life as well.”