A 2008 Olympian with the Venezuela national team, Johana Gomez now is the focal point of Lee University’s national softball hopes.
She’s far from the only outstanding player on the team ranked No. 2 in the NAIA with a 51-4 record, but the senior pitcher and slugger is the best player in the Lady Flames’ league — perhaps in the entire national association. An NAIA second-team All-American last year, she is the reigning national player of the week after going 9-for-12 with four home runs, two doubles, 10 RBIs and six runs and striking out 20 batters in a three-hit shutout and a no-hitter last week.
Gomez attracted considerable NCAA Division I interest while at Iowa Southeastern Community College and actually was at the University of Tennessee for a week leading up to the 2009 fall semester before Lady Vols coaches Ralph and Karen Weekly had to give her up for eligibility reasons. She had plenty of hours from her junior college when she left for Lee a year earlier, but she did not graduate from there, a distinction between NAIA and NCAA eligibility.
Is she the best Lee softball player ever?
“Oh, all around, I think she is by far,” said coach Emily Russell, who has a 331-128 record in eight seasons as head coach, served a couple of years as a Lee assistant coach before that and previously was a Lady Flames star herself.
In fact, Russell held the school record of 194 strikeouts in a season until this year, and she did it in 305 innings in 2000. Gomez is merely the leader of this year’s staff but has 220 strikeouts in 137 2/3 innings — with only 28 walks and 11 earned runs — and is 25-1.
Her lone loss was 2-1 to Saint Gregory’s in the Gulf Coast Classic on March 14. The Oklahoma team got one earned run with 11 strikeouts against Gomez.
With her 0.56 pitching ERA, she’s batting .509 with 14 home runs, 20 doubles, two triples and 75 RBIs. She has struck out four times in 175 at-bats.
“We’ve never had a pitcher who also led us in hitting,” Russell said. “It just astounds me how she’s able to produce. I’ve never seen a kid perform that consistently.”
The Lady Flames open play in the SSAC tournament in Columbus, Ga., at 10 this morning against eighth-seeded Southern Wesleyan. They will be among the favorites in the NAIA national tournament May 19-26 in Decatur, Ala., no matter how they do this week.
“My goal is to go there and get to the final, and then you try to win it,” Gomez said. “I think our team is really good. It’s not just about going to nationals; it’s about winning.”
Gomez had the chance to go from junior college to Mobile University, which had won the 2008 NAIA title with seven members of the Venezuelan national program, and Russell also thought she might accompany an Iowa Southeastern teammate from her native country to perennial power Oklahoma City.
“It came down to those two and us,” said Russell, whose link was all-conference shortstop Hernanza Ruiz, who had made the final round of cuts in determining Venezuela’s Olympic squad. “Johana said she wanted to play with Hernanza.”
Gomez, who had to take classes to learn English in junior college, noted that Ruiz only recently has been hitting at her usual level and laughingly said it was because the shortstop finally gave up “an old bat that was a color she liked.”
Actually, Ruiz was delayed in returning to Lee and sat out the fall because she had chicken pox and then was in a car wreck.
“But she has raised her batting average tremendously,” Russell said.
Junior second baseman Danielle Balough is batting above .400 with nine homers in the cleanup spot behind Gomez, and fleet center fielder Savanna Bell, catcher Krista Goodlet, third baseman Jenevieve Cena, right fielder Taylor Horseman, first baseman Caitlin Haley and Ruiz also are above .300. Speed on the bases and throughout the outfield is another big team asset, Russell noted, and Balough’s sophomore sister Brittany is the No. 2 pitcher on a staff that also includes Sara Mitchell and Caitlin Beshears with ERAs under 1.90.