Softball: Camarena small but mighty for Eagles
Estancia High senior Karina Camarena may have been born to be a leader.
At the very least, responsibility was drilled into Camarena at a young age by her mother, Maria Heredia.
“My mom always wanted to educate me in the way that I will be able to take care of myself when I grow up,” Camarena said. “She doesn’t want me to depend on others. If I have to live on my own, then I can do it perfectly fine. She taught me the basics of how to cook and clean from a young age. I thank my mother for that. Shoutout to my mom.”
Camarena, the oldest of three children, has always helped take care of her younger brothers. Hector is now a freshman at Estancia, while Luis is a fifth-grader at Adams Elementary.
Karina returned to Adams, which she also attended, on Thursday morning. Luis was getting honored for his reading level, and Adams also honored Karina for getting into UC Berkeley, where she’ll be attending this fall.
Catch Karina Camarena on any given day, and she might be in a different place. She left Saturday morning for a Washington, D.C. trip with her Estancia government class taught by Jennifer Fox (formerly Broderick).
Karina, who has a 4.4 grade-point average, takes her academics seriously. She recently completed taking five Advanced Placement tests, in Chemistry, Calculus, English Literature and Composition, Government and Macroeconomics.
She wants to make a difference with her life. She plans to major in public health at UC Berkeley, and minor in global poverty and practice.
“My ultimate goal is to become a family physician,” Camarena said. “I want to do work in a low-income city where a lot of people might be in poverty. I want to be able to bring medical help to those who can’t afford it.”
She has more than 300 community service hours, most of those spent at Someone Cares soup kitchen on 19th Street in Costa Mesa. And would you believe she somehow finds time to work part-time at a Carl’s Jr. in Huntington Beach?
“She squeezes it all in,” Estancia softball Coach Carrie Lester said.
Oh yeah, softball.
That’s an arena where Camarena, a co-captain for the Eagles, was able to show her leadership in a very tangible way for Estancia this year. Lester saw it in her last year as a junior, and knew she wanted Camarena as a captain as a senior. She shared the role with junior Felicia Rios.
“She’s just a natural leader,” Lester said. “She gets the girls going, she holds them accountable and she’s very responsible. I mean, she’s always been leading the warmups and helping the coaches out a lot.”
Camarena is a four-year varsity player, but hadn’t really started since she was a freshman. That changed this year, when she became the Eagles’ primary first baseman, albeit an atypical one as she stands just 5-foot-1.
Lester said Camarena did fine defensively. Batting was more of a struggle, as she hit .179, though she was second on the team with 19 walks to result in a more-than-respectable on-base percentage of .450.
Camarena still had two very productive games when Estancia needed it most. The Eagles had a must-win game at Costa Mesa on May 15. A CIF Southern Section Division 5 playoff berth was on the line, as the teams finished tied for third in the Orange Coast League.
The game was originally scheduled for the day before, which forced Camarena to reschedule her final AP test in Macroeconomics. But the teams only got through 2/3 of an inning that day, with Estancia holding a 7-0 lead, before the rain came.
Camarena saw her team get comfortable when the game resumed the next day. Costa Mesa’s bats awakened, and suddenly Estancia’s lead was trimmed to 8-5. Camarena had a message for her teammates.
“I told them, ‘You’re seeing how bad they want it, so I expect to see that much or even more from our team,’” Camarena recalled. “‘I want you guys to show me that you guys want it more than they do.’ Then it just clicked, and everybody started hitting. We just kept the lead and we shut them down.”
Camarena did her part, scoring three runs and hitting a key two-run double, as Estancia pulled away and won 20-5. She was at it again Tuesday, as the Eagles traveled to Templeton for a Division 5 wild-card game.
“I got on every way possible,” said Camarena, who had a hit, was walked, got hit by a pitch and reached via catcher’s interference in Estancia’s wild 13-11 victory in eight innings.
The season ended Thursday, as Estancia fell to No. 3-seeded Garden Grove, 7-0, in the first round on the road. Yet it was a solid season for the Eagles, who graduated a lot from last year’s squad.
“It was really fun playing with my team,” Camarena said. “I’d say it was one of the best years I had so far. Little to no drama was what made it work ... It was a pleasant surprise to see how far we got. I think it was amazing to see how well we clicked together and how well we were able to play with each other.”
Camarena did plenty of juggling. That AP Macroecomics test was rescheduled for Wednesday at 8 a.m., and the Eagles didn’t get back from Templeton until about 1 a.m. late Tuesday night. But that was all right, as Camarena took it in stride.
This is the same girl who applied to 11 colleges — four in the Cal State system and seven in the UC system — and was accepted at every one. She’s in the top 5% of her graduating class at Estancia.
“I may be a little bit nerdy,” Camarena said with a smile, flashing her turquoise-colored braces. “Just a little bit, though. Not much.”
More than that, she was a leader this season for the Eagles. The job’s not always easy.
“Even though I was mean, I still loved all [my teammates],” she said. “It’s hard, because part of you wants to mess around with them, but the other part knows that you have to set the example. You have to take positions that the whole team’s not going to like. Obviously, it’s tough.
“Most of the people are OK with it, but you always have people who aren’t. Felicia has a strong enough character that she’ll be able to deal with that next year. I think she’ll do great. Softball is her passion, and that will even make her a greater captain maybe than I was.”
But it’s a tall task, replacing the short Camarena.
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Karina Camarena
Born: June 24, 1997
Hometown: Costa Mesa
Height: 5-foot-1
Sport: Softball
Year: Senior
Coach: Carrie Lester
Favorite food: Enchiladas
Favorite movie: “42”
Favorite athletic moment: When Estancia battled back for a 10-6 nonleague win at Anaheim earlier this season.
Week in review: Camarena, a co-captain, had a two-RBI double and scored three runs as Estancia beat rival Costa Mesa, 20-5, on May 15 to clinch a CIF Southern Section Division 5 playoff berth.
