Top pitcher is Broncos’ first player signing

Santos wins full scholarship, will lead inaugural team

By jason vondersmith

The Portland Tribune, May 15, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Clackamas Community College’s Renee Santos heads to Boise State in the fall.

©2007 TRACY SWISHER

The junior college career of Renee Santos is coming to an end, but thanks to her perseverance in life and softball, she’ll have a major new beginning.

Santos, a former St. Mary’s Academy pitcher from Southeast Portland, has received a full scholarship from Boise State.

Pitching for Clackamas Community College, she blew away much of the competition in the Northwest Athletic Association of Community Colleges the past two years. The sophomore hurler entered the season-ending league tournament May 16 through May 18 at Delta Park with 42 career wins and 676 career strikeouts.

Boise State coach Erin Thorpe was hired to start a program and went looking for a pitcher. She had heard and read about Santos. Thorpe’s sister had been recruiting the big hurler to San Diego State, but Santos couldn’t see herself living in an expensive city. Santos also turned away an offer from UNLV because of the ever-present party life in Las Vegas.

Without seeing her pitch, Thorpe offered a scholarship to Santos, who liked the idea of being the Broncos’ first pitcher — and first player — signed by the program. She liked that Boise is only hours from home, and she liked Thorpe. Done deal.

“When I go in, there won’t be a clique or anything,” she says.

Thorpe says that she needed to sign players, and quickly, after being hired in October 2007, only a month before letter-of-intent signing day. Thorpe signed 14 players, including Santos and four others from the NWAACC: Jessie Hanna, Lower Columbia; Kathy Cox, Mt. Hood; Laurel Wyatt, Wenatchee; and Kelsey Perkins, South Puget Sound.

It’s not often that NWAACC players get signed to Division I. Santos and her new teammates are elated.

“Can you believe it?” she says.

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