Softball Athlete of the Year: Kondo leaves mark as Scots great

“She definitely will go down as one of Carlmont’s greatest hitters,” Carlmont head coach Marco Giuliacci said. “There’s no doubt about that.”

Hitting .457 on the year, Kondo ran away the Peninsula Athletic League Bay Division home run crown, and also led the league with 44 RBIs. And while she didn’t garner PAL Bay Division Player of the Year honors — that award went to her Carlmont teammate, junior two-way standout Mailey McLemore — Kondo has been named the Daily Journal Softball Player of the Year.

“Productivity wise, they both meant a lot to the team,” Giuliacci said. “Obviously Mailey got Player of the Year because she was also a pitcher, and it’s a lot to also be a great hitter at the same time. But Cam was the true team leader. … All the girls looked up to her and followed her. She made a huge impact just through her leadership abilities.”

Kondo and McLemore were a potent complement who anchored the heart of the Scots order. McLemore, hitting in the No. 3 spot, batted .483 with five homers and 34 RBIs. But with Kondo in the cleanup spot, McLemore had the protection of the best power hitter in the PAL — heck, one of the best in CCS as she ranked third in home runs in the Central Coast Section — all year long.

“As great a hitter Mailey is, you’ve got to give credit to Cam because she didn’t have a Cam (hitting) behind her,” Giuliacci said.

While their batting positions were set in stone at Carlmont, Kondo and McLemore flip-flopped in previous years on the travel-ball circuit. Having played together several seasons through the years for the Cal Nuggets, the chemistry proved invaluable in their final season together with the Scots.

“I think something we have is a chemistry because we’ve been playing with each other and against each other for a long time,” Kondo said. “We don’t need to worry. We have the security of knowing there’s always someone behind us.”

The pairing was certainly beneficial to the Scots who, after having their string of four straight Bay Division titles snapped in 2016, returned to the top of the league standings this year by sharing a co-championship with Half Moon Bay. In doing so, Carlmont and HMB both qualified for the first ever CCS Open Division softball playoff bracket, with the Scots earning the No. 1 seed. They went on to fall to eventual Open Division champion Mitty 7-3 on May 23 in Kondo’s final game with Carlmont.

It was a season to remember though as Kondo opened the year on a wicked tear. She batted safely in her first 20 games, a hitting streak that lasted nearly two months.

“At the beginning of the season I just wanted to come out and go hard because it was my last season at Carlmont,” Kondo said. “Looking back at my [previous] two seasons, I didn’t do all I wanted to do, so getting off to a good start was good for that.”

It was also an emotional season for not just the Scots softball team, but the entire Carlmont family, as Jim Liggett — who retired in 2016 after 41 years as the team’s head coach — died June 6 from ALS.

In addition to leading the softball team to eight CCS softball championships, including the final one in 2014 when Kondo as a freshman was a late-season varsity call-up, Liggett was a longtime teacher at Carlmont who, in the realm of athletics, coached nearly every varsity sport under the sun at one time or another. And the reason we know the program’s all-time single-season home run record is 12, set by Michelle Sanchez in 1981, is because of the detailed records kept by Liggett.

“I think he, as a person, always put Carlmont first,” Kondo said. “Everything he did was for Carlmont. Learning what I did from him was tradition … because everything he did there was insane; it was pretty rare. That was one of the things I was thankful to play at Carlmont was to be part of that legacy.”

For Kondo, her softball career is far from over. Committed to play at Cal next season, she will look to continue hitting bombs at Levine-Fricke Field for another coaching great, Golden Bears head coach Diane Ninemire.

And the Kondo legacy isn’t finished for the Scots. While Cam is the middle sister of three, she becomes the second to go the Division I route out of Carlmont.

Her older sister Mariko went to Syracuse University as a freshman before returning to the Bay Area to play at Foothill College as a sophomore transfer in 2017. And younger sister Amanda just finished her freshman season as Carlmont varsity’s everyday shortstop, hitting .333 with three home runs on the year.

“I’ve got her little sister for the next three years,” Giuliacci said. “As a freshman she looked pretty damn good.”