Around the Horn with Capper Reed
3/22/2005 12:00:00 AM | Softball
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By Matt Hooper, UA Media Relations
Capper Reed knows softball.
She also knows baseball, basketball and volleyball.
The senior outfielder is enjoying her fourth year as a member of the Alabama Crimson Tide softball team, following a junior season packed with awards, accolades and an appearance in NCAA Regionals. The Tide’s chances of equaling or exceeding last year’s successes are excellent, thanks in part to Reed’s leadership and resolve.
Those qualities are the by-product of years of excellence in athletic competition. Reed was a renaissance athlete before, during and after college, stemming back to when she and her brothers would congregate in the backyard of their Guntersville, Ala., home and engage in spirited football, baseball and basketball games.
“I grew up in an athletic family,” Reed says. “My dad played baseball and football and was a professional water skier, and my mom was a cheerleader. I guess you could say they influenced me.”
Naturally, Reed gravitated toward other like-minded, multiple-sport stars. From her childhood to the present, Capper has listed Bo Jackson her favorite professional athlete. Jackson’s infamous "Bo Knows" commercials, which teamed the Auburn star with blues artist Bo Diddley, highlighted his prowess on the baseball diamond, football gridiron and basketball hardwood. Jackson chose not to focus his skill on one athletic path, but to enjoy a whole range of challenging sports. Capper decided the same.
Taking a page from the times spent with her male siblings in the backyard, Capper played a variety of sports before and during high school. She, as well as many other area girls, began playing the traditionally male sport of baseball at the Guntersville recreation center. Most of her teammates, however, dropped the sport as they reached the ages of seven to eight years old, focusing instead on softball. Reed decided at first to go with the flow.
“They didn’t take it seriously,” Reed remembers. “They were like: ‘Ok, just go out there and throw the ball.’ So I was like: ‘Ok, I’m playing baseball.”
So play baseball she did. When the time came to enroll at Guntersville High, Capper signed herself up for one sport during each season: volleyball for the fall and basketball for the winter. But as spring approached, Reed learned that the school only offered the soft-pitch variety of the softball game, an option that did not appeal to the multi-sport athlete.
Instead of breaking from spring competition, Reed decided that the only way she was going to face down a high velocity pitch for the Wildcats was to break that invisible gender barrier separating girls and America's pastime. Capper Reed became a baseball player.
”All the guys that were on my high school team were guys I had grown up playing with,” Capper recalls. “So nobody had a problem with it at all.”
She batted in the two-hole, behind her brother Whit, during a particularly memorable Area Championship game in Madison County. It was the game where Capper entered a league of her own.
“The game was tied at 0-0, and I saw an outside pitch,” remembers Reed. “I just swung and luckily it went over the fence.”
That homer, which ended up being the difference in the game, was the first ever hit by a female baseball player in the state of Alabama. It solidified Capper as not just a girl that could play baseball, but simply a great baseball player.
“It was really exciting,” said Reed. “I was on cloud nine.”
By the end of her prep career, Reed had spent all four high school seasons with the Wildcat baseball and basketball teams. She chose the University of Alabama to continue her basketball career, as well as the place to finally start playing against the best softballers in the country.
Soon though, the pressures and expectations of being a two-sport athlete in college began to wear on Reed. She was thoroughly committed to the Tide's women's hoops program, but truly missed the opportunity to join her softball teammates for fall practices. After careful and thoughtful deliberation, Reed decided it was finally time to set her sights on just one sport: softball.
The benefits have been undeniable as Reed is having a breakout year in her final campaign. Her Crimson Tide team is rolling toward postseason play, the time when Capper hopes that her team's goals do not go unfulfilled.
“Right now we just want to win the SEC and then go to the tournament and do well there,” Reed says. “But of course we are all trying to end up in Oklahoma City.”
Reed is slowly and steadily approaching her final at bat for the Crimson Tide, which she hopes will take place inside ASA Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City during the Women's College World Series. And perhaps, with the game in the balance and the eyes of the nation looking on, Capper will spot a familiar outside pitch; take a mighty swing, and send the ball soaring past the outstretched arm of the outfielder and over the fence.
What? It's not like it hasn't happened before.
