DALLAS — Amid an thrilling MLB All-Star weekend, younger softball athletes competed within the 2024 Jennie Finch Traditional, introduced by ARM & HAMMER, on the Texas Rangers Youth Academy in Dallas, Texas.
On the finish of the Traditional, Compton Youth Academy participant Katelen Pedroza acquired the Jennie Finch Empowerment Award.
The award was introduced to Pedroza by Finch, the MLB Youth Softball Ambassador, USA Softball Corridor of Famer and two-time U.S. Olympic softball medalist the award is known as for. The prize, as at all times, features a $10,000 faculty scholarship examine and a visit to the 2024 World Collection.
Since 2019, MLB, in partnership with ARM & HAMMER, has introduced the Jennie Finch Empowerment Award yearly to 4 younger feminine athletes to acknowledge their achievements as gamers on and off the sphere.
The six guiding rules of the award are management, motivation, dedication, dedication, humility and integrity.
All through the basic, for award nominators, one tenet and award pillar inside Pedroza stood out: motivation.
“I really like cheering on my teammates; that is my favourite factor to do,” stated Pedroza. “I am at all times the loudest one on the sphere cheering them on, and I believe that it’s essential to be loud and vocal simply to maintain everybody’s vitality up.”
In video games as troublesome as softball or baseball, those that encourage and uplift others may be extra useful to a crew than gold.
“As a coach, you need 100 of her,” stated her Compton Youth Academy coach, Missy Poti. “She is a kind of gamers that regardless of how she does on the sphere, she’s at all times going to be optimistic and encourage everybody round her.”
Pedroza’s mother and father, her father, Juan Pedroza and her mom, Martha Rivera, traveled from California to be in attendance for this yr’s Traditional and had been overjoyed when their daughter was named the award recipient.
“I believe that she goes on the sphere and she or he performs together with her coronary heart,” Rivera stated. “She’s at all times cheering her crew on and giving confidence to her teammates.”
And Pedroza doesn’t simply assist her crew on the sphere. When she’s not taking part in or at school, she’s serving to run the crew refreshment stand at her highschool.
“I really like being surrounded by softball even on the weekends, mainly to fundraise … It’s for my crew, so clearly I am going to do all the things I can to assist and help them in any means,” she stated.
Pedroza, a shortstop within the class of 2025, is already pondering of what profession fields she might need to pursue in faculty.
“I do need to examine sports activities enterprise or enterprise. I need to come again as a coach or perhaps a PE trainer however [I] undoubtedly need to be round softball,” she stated.
A $10,000 scholarship examine can go a great distance for school planning, and Pedroza understands the privilege and honor it’s to obtain such an award.
“It means a lot to me, being an athlete and dealing towards attempting to get my faculty paid for, [it’s] one of the simplest ways I may also help my household out,” she stated.
Her teammates had been simply as pleased for her to win as she was, a sign of what her perspective brings to these round her.
“She’s at all times uplifting her teammates and even when she’s having a nasty sport, she’s cheering you on by your facet,” stated 2022 JFEA recipient and Pedroza’s Compton Youth Academy teammate Grace Shary.
“Listening to Kat’s title get known as simply introduced again a number of recollections of after I acquired the award. I used to be so pleased with her,” stated Shary. “I do know precisely the way it feels and I used to be simply so pleased for her. She actually deserves it.”
The Jennie Finch Empowerment Award is introduced in any respect MLB Develops softball occasions all year long: the Breakthrough Collection, Jennie Finch Traditional, the Elite Improvement Invitational and the RBI World Collection.
Pedroza now joins an inventory of previous recipients who’re acknowledged as exemplary students, humanitarians and athletes, one thing any mother or father may be pleased with.
“Serving to my household is the factor that I need to do on the finish of the day and simply making them proud.”
