April 26, 2002

At the highest levels of collegiate softball, success is often reserved for those who spent their childhoods honing their skills in warm weather cities. Places where the sport is a year-round event, not just a three-month season.

This year, though, UIC senior Amber Stachura is proving to the softball world what a blue-collar Midwest girl with a lot of heart and desire can accomplish.

Through 50 games, the player Co-Head Coach Tom Gray calls the "prototypical" rightfielder, owns a career-best batting average of .377 with 11 home runs, and ranks sixth in the nation with 51 RBI. These numbers have Stachura in the running for Horizon League Player of the Year honors and a shot at All-America status, a rare feat for a player who waited three years for her time to shine.

"Amber is a true representative of the Midwest work ethic," Co-Head Coach Sarah O'Malley-Fisher said of her senior standout. "She has just come out and worked hard on all the facets of her game throughout her career and she is just reaping the benefits of that now."

After three years in a supporting role on talent-rich teams, Stachura jumped up into a starring role with the Flames this season both on and off the field.

"I felt this season I had to go and be a senior leader," Stachura said. "Off the field, I feel like I should help the younger girls out. A lot of them come to me for advice ranging from softball stuff to just general college stuff. They've told me they respect me as a player for my leadership and that is really great to know that I've earned that.

"On the field, I have to play my role and try and help pick the team up when they need it."

Help the team she has, as all of her offensive totals this year better her previous three years combined.

"She has really developed into the player I thought she would," former UIC head coach Mike McGovern, who recruited Stachura to UIC, said. "She has staircased her career and is finishing strong her senior year.

"She went out to be the best and became the best by going against the best competition in the country."

Not only did Stachura take on the best competition in games, though. Many of her on-field successes now can be traced to her battling some of the best softball players in the country for a chance to play on her own team.

A standout player in the state of Illinois coming out of Morton High School in 1998, Stachura joined a UIC squad that was loaded with talent and on the cusp of its best season ever. The Flames already featured a pair of future All-Americans - Samantha Iuli and Stefanie Christoferson -and also touted a pair of highly-recruited California freshmen in Edel Leyden and Jennifer Tiffany, who would quickly earn starting spots and all-conference recognition in their rookie years.

Despite not being an instant standout on the team, Stachura, who singled in her first collegiate at-bat versus No. 1 Arizona, made her presence known on the Flames right away as one of the team's top pressure performers.

"I kind of like pressure situations," Stachura said. "I view those situations really as being no different than when we are up by eight in a game and I'm at bat.

"I really do like being in those situations, though."

Nowhere has this been more prevalent then come conference tournament time, an event that has become Stachura's personal stomping ground. In three previous league tournaments, Stachura has twice earned All-Tournament honors and owns a .500 (13-for-26) career average with two home runs, three doubles and 11 RBI.

The 1999 Midwestern Collegiate Conference Tournament was where Flames fans got the first glimpse of the Stachura they see on the field today. Not looked at as a dangerous threat at the time, she exploded in the tournament, which included a 3-for-3, grand slam, championship record six-RBI effort in the title game versus UW-Green Bay.

This season, under new co-head coaches O'Malley-Fisher and Gray, Stachura was slated from day one as more than just a player to provide late-inning and end-of-the-year heroics. She was to be one of the players counted on every day to continue UIC's tradition of being a national power.

The move fit Stachura perfectly.

"I think I've relaxed a lot more this year," Stachura said. "I'm not so worried about being pulled out of the game if I don't hit or I make a mistake. I can just go out there and relax.

"In past seasons I've always been a little disappointed with the way I was hitting or the way I was playing, but to this point so far I am very happy with the way things are going."

Stachura's starring role this season has also spread to academics. The marketing and management major earned UIC Softball Student-Athlete of the Year honors on April 22 at the academic awards banquet for holding the highest GPA on the team.

Though she didn't take the Pacific Coast Highway to get to Flames Field, Stachura has become UIC's leader and she will now try and finish her career the way she started it, leading her team to a Horizon League Championship and a trip to NCAA Regionals.

"Anyone can be a great player," said Stachura. "It doesn't matter where you come from as long as you are willing to work hard at it."