This is Brentt Eads of Line Drive Softball.

Eight years ago, while working at FloSoftball, I was privileged to be part of a wonderful event called the Louisville Slugger Hit Club which lasted several years and included many young future college greats when they were finishing up their high school and travel ball careers.

My role was to do media coverage, certainly, but also to help with identifying players to invite to the Hit Club summer events. In other words, player personnel.

The article below was from 2017 when we profiled one of that year’s attendees—a then already heralded power hitter from the Aloha State named Jocelyn Alo who, if memory is correct, would go on to do alright at the college level too!

Here’s a bit of the event preview from back then published on July 6, 2017 including our bio on Jocelyn. To see the complete article, click HERE…

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The third year of the Louisville Slugger Hit Club will take place Saturday, July 29, 2017 through Monday, July 31, 2017 in Orange County, California and once again feature 10 of the top high school grads who are about to embark on their college softball careers.

Louisville Slugger and Premier Girls Fastpitch (PGF) have partnered to give these elite players from the Class of 2017 three unique days of education, fun, bonding and competition ranging from a trip to Disneyland and watching a Giants vs. Dodgers MLB battle to hearing from legends like Sue Enquist and former Hit Clubbers now playing in the Women’s College World Series.

Past Hit Club participants have included such current college standouts as Shay Knighten (Oklahoma), Amanda Lorenz (Florida), Brooke Vines (Tennessee), Morganne Flores (Washington), Amanda Doyle (LSU), Jessica Harper (Arizona), Elissa Brown (Alabama), Nicole Mendes (Oklahoma), Nicole Bates (Washington), Shannon Rhodes (Oregon) and Dejah Mulipola (Arizona).

This summer’s selections have been evaluated by a panel of coaches, scouts and evaluators who look for hitting expertise, technique and ability for all types of hitters ranging from speedy slappers to long-ball mashers and will come from the pool of players chosen as PGF All-Americans with many participating in the PGF All-American game on Friday, July 28—the day before the Hit Club begins.

HIT CLUB SPOTLIGHT: JOCELYN ALO

Position: catcher/first base
High School (City/ST): Campbell (Ewa Beach, Hawaii)
Club Team: OC Batbusters – Stith
University: Oklahoma

Key Stats & Honors:

1^st Team FloSoftball All-American, PGF All-American, Gatorade State Player of the Year (twice), USA Today 1^st Team All-American, MaxPreps All-American, led team to Hawaii Div. I title, ranked as the #9 prospect in the 2017 Hot 100; batted .571 with an .804 on-base percentage and a 1.450 slugging percentage and had 58 walks in 107 plate appearances including almost all her playoff bats as teams were fearful to pitch to her, as a junior batted .612 with eight home runs in 18 games.

Scouting Report:

Jocelyn is the most feared power hitter in her class. Every at-bat is an adventure to watch as she rarely gets cheated and often hits tape-measure shots that clear the fence by a mile. Against elite pitching at the So Cal A’s Invitational a month ago, the Hawaiian slugger had four home runs in her first four games with 12 RBI including a grand slam.

Her power is natural and comes from being a skilled wrestler—she won the Hawaii state wrestling championship as a junior—but she’s so good at softball, she commutes regularly from the Islands to work out with Coach Mike Stith. The question in college will be where she lines up, be it behind the plate or perhaps at a corner or in the outfield or even as a DP, but there’s no doubt her bat will get her in games and early in her career as she’s shown she can mash against elite pitching.