Watch one second of Yessenia Lopez’s throwing abilities and you will notice how explosive her stuff can be coming out of her hand. Follow that up with significant numbers during the season and you have the makings of a great pitcher in the circle. Lopez knows her strengths and weaknesses, whether she’s in the circle or in the outfield.
Playing to strengths and weaknesses
Lopez’s strengths are definitely her rise ball and curveball as she dots the corners of the plate with precision. Her long arms help twirl the ball right into the catcher’s mitt. She tops out at 69 MPH for both pitches as she tries to mix things up, which also comes with a changeup to throw off batters. Lopez’s numbers for the fall were impressive as she posted a 1.20 ERA with 150 K’s and held opponents to a .116 batting average.
“I’m mostly a curve and a rise ball pitcher,” Lopez said. “I’m not changeup pitcher, but I use my changeup as more of a waste pitch.”
Being able to identify your strengths and weaknesses is something that comes with maturity, but it also comes with knowing how to use your flaw against your opponent. Repetition of the same movement in all her pitches which makes it even harder on the batter and shows why her stuff is so dominant. In the spring, Lopez threw 12 complete games. Two of those were no-hitters and in total she posted a 1.40 ERA with 145 K’s.
How a commitment to UCF came to be
In August of this year, Yessenia made the decision to commit to the University of Central Florida. Lopez had already visited a few of the college’s camps and had impressed coaches enough to receive an offer. After watching some of the players and hearing from the coaches, Lopez had a good feeling about the college.
“It reminds me of my travel team, the way they kind of act with each other, because I’m very close to my travel team,” Lopez said “They’re kind of famous, they’re on tv, they are legit, and they act just like my normal team.”
Of course, there is some unknown pressure while trying to display your talents at the highest level which is something Yessenia had to get over.
“It’s kind of weird because you don’t know what colleges are interested in you so mentally it’s very tough,” Lopez said. “It’s different when your coach is telling you…it’s different when a parent is telling you…it’s different when a teammate is telling you are doing great.”
Ultimately, the best outcome is when you get an offer, but that feeling of the unknown was also helped guided by her older sister, Amanda Lopez, who is also Yessenia’s coach. Her sister helped her send emails to coaches, stay up late posting on social media, and provide advice to her as well as her teammates.
Lopez is looking forward to her career at UCF and can not wait to get started as she praised the school for their academic and on-field success. She is eager to help contribute to the school, but also find her way academically, as she has said that teachers are willing to work with her schedule. Her anticipation is warranted and her skillset makes it easy to see why UCF gave her an offer.