HONOLULU — College softball catchers, the axiom goes, should hit down in the order to lessen the wear and tear of the most arduous position on the field. In defensive half-innings, they usually cede pitch-calling duties to their coaches.
Not Hawaii’s Izabella Martinez, who is always on call.
The senior from Garden Grove, Calif., has been indispensable for the Rainbow Wahine in her final season. Martinez has batted leadoff in all 36 games for UH (22-14, 8-6), which has won three straight conference series heading into this weekend’s three-game set against Cal State Bakersfield (15-23, 6-9).
While hitting leadoff is a first this season, Martinez has called pitches — a rare distinction — for nearly the entirety of her college career.
Martinez acknowledged those dual roles can be a challenge, especially when UH plays at home and she must peel off the catcher’s armor and immediately grab a bat during the first-inning change of sides.
“It's been a little bit of a mind game,” she said this week, “trying to switch my mindset into defense and really working with pitch counts to then going into hitting, and trying to stay away from trying to figure out what they're calling.”
But, she added, it’s a workload she cherishes.
It certainly has not diminished her productivity, nor her consistency.
Martinez, known by the team as “Bella,” has started 136 straight games going back to the end of her freshman season, and 173 in total. She owns a nine-game hitting streak and has hit safely in all but two games this year.
The reigning Big West Field Player of the Week batted .556, including a game-tying two-run single in the finale of UH’s series win over UC Riverside last weekend.
She batted seventh as a freshman, fifth as a sophomore as an All-Big West first teamer, and third as a junior when she was a BWC second-teamer.
“I had no intentions of ever batting leadoff,” Martinez said. “I just didn't think that that was something that I was capable of. I. But I was approached, and I got told,’ listen, this is what you're going to do this year.’ And who am I to turn that down? I said, ‘Yeah, okay, I'll do it.’ I'd only batted leadoff a few times in my travel ball career with my travel team (the Ohana Tigers). So yeah, it's been fun.”
Fun, indeed: She leads the team with a .368 batting average and .471 on-base percentage. She has yet to clear the wall this season, but leads the Wahine with 10 doubles and 21 walks.
She has been even sharper in Big West play with a .413 batting average.
Her main impact is still felt defensively, where she’s worked with Addison Kostrencich and Macy Brandl to lead a contact-pitching side that has fielded at a .977 clip — best in the Big West and 13th in NCAA Division I.
Coach Bob Coolen began turning over pitch-calling duties to her in the first tournament of her freshman year of 2022, the Rebel Kickoff hosted by UNLV.
“He never really stated that it was going to be my job,” Martinez recalled. “It didn't have to be said.”
That task has remained for her, even in the rare games that she did not catch and was UH’s designated player.
“She's in the mind of the pitchers more than we are,” Coolen said. “We're on the side. We can call every pitch like a lot of coaches do, but we don't like to do that, because you have to get in a rhythm with your pitcher. The only thing that we've asked her to do, probably more extensively, is mix it up (with more changeups).”
Martinez grew up watching her father, Ignacio, catch and would see him call pitches. But the concept of calling them didn’t fully materialize until she played with the Ohana Tigers travel ball team and coach Vince Arslanian gradually transferred duties to her.
“It kind of made sense in my brain, so he slowly started to let me start calling the games,” she said.
She did it her junior and senior seasons at Edison High, where the 5-foot-3 player is in the Huntington Beach, Calif., school’s hall of fame.
Martinez credited her father as the “mastermind” of her swing.
She has four more series to showcase it, plus the Big West tournament in Fullerton, Calif., if UH holds on to a spot in the top six. The Wahine enter Friday’s 11:30 a.m. Hawaii time game against CSUB at the Roadrunner Softball Complex in fourth place.
“It makes me sad talking about it, but getting able to just play in front of him these last few series, and for him to see what I've been able to accomplish with his help, it's something that's just so special to me, and I'm as sad as I am for this journey to be closing,” Martinez said of her father. “I'm happy that I get to finish it in front of my family.”
Brian McInnis covers the state’s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.
