Athlete of the Month: Joliet West's Ames Knocking Down the Fences

High pitch. Low pitch.

Inside pitch. Outside pitch.

Joliet West softball slugger Jennifer Ames hits them to all parts of the field.

The only question is where the ball will land after she connects.

“She’s killing me,” Joliet attorney and Tigers volunteer assistant coach Jim Brumund said during a batting cage session with Ames on Tuesday.

She’s killing JT West’s opponents, too.

Ames, a sophomore second baseman, compiled a .375 batting average with team-leading totals of five home runs and 14 RBIs as the Tigers raced out of the blocks with a 7-3 start. She is honored today for her power surge as Patch’s Athlete of the Month for March.

Ames bats third for Joliet West and teams with freshman shortstop Kristine Bourg to give the Tigers one of the area’s top double-play combinations and one of the youngest in the varsity ranks.

“Definitely, I expect some good things from Jennifer, being that she is a sophomore now and in her second year on the varsity, as I do with a lot of the girls,” Joliet West coach Heather Suca said. “We have a young team overall and young returning starters.

“She, along with a few others, has made some tremendous strides in the off-season. I really do believe that Jennifer (Ames) put in a ton of work with her summer-ball team and just conditioning stuff on her own—taking the conditioning here in her athletic performance class at school. She’s so much stronger.

“And just her mindset and maturity—every day she comes out to practice she wants to get better at something. There is never a time when I’m looking at her and she’s just going through the motions.

“She’s always, always questioning things. ‘How can I do this better?’ And I think that’s what made her jump so much from her freshman year to her sophomore year.”

Suca said Ames has a shorter swing and generates much of her power with quick hands and an ability to swing through the strike zone in a blink of an eye. Ames said she feels more comfortable playing with the “older girls” on the other side of the chalk line.

“I feel like being a freshman on varsity—there is a lot of pressure, you know?” Ames said. “So, being the sophomore now, I have more confidence.”

Ames works to stay low on the ball during infield drills and works with Bourg to set a tone for the Tigers up the middle. On occasion, Ames raises her voice.

“I feel like our pitchers are in their zone when they’re pitching, so we need our infielders to step up and be those people picking them up,” she said. “We have to talk to our outfielders. So, yeah, I find myself to be more vocal than some of the other players.”

Ames and Bourg have played together since they were 10 years old. When the two are not on the softball diamond, they’re more than likely in the gym or the batting cage. Ames works out in the off-season at Undisputed, a cross-fit training gym in Joliet, where she lifts weights and develops her explosive moves.

“A lot of it is body weight—we do have bars and stuff that we do like that,” she said. “It’s great. That gym, seriously, if I did not go there this winter, it would be a totally different me. It’s more like you’re free-weighting. So, it’s your body weight doing the movements. Agility. We work on quick movements.

“As an athlete, you have to be able to do one thing one second and then switch right into another thing.”

For Ames, that hard work in the gym has translated into success on the softball diamond. Listen to Brumund as he works the pitching machine in the cage.

“She’s killing me,” he said.

It’s become routine.

Ames smacks the cover off the ball and then breaks into her home run trot.

“She had power last year,” Suca said. “She has even more power this year.”

Previous Athlete of the Month Winners

SEPTEMBER: JT Central's Singletary is Patch Athlete of the Month

OCTOBER: JCA's Blotnik Charges to Head of the Pack

NOVEMBER: Ivlow Rushes To JCA Football Rescue

DECEMBER: JCA's Lumpkin Has Game to Go with Nickname(s)

JANUARY: Joliet West's Dunnigan a King on His Own Court

FEBRUARY: Joliet Central's Zabala Doesn't Know Meaning of Word Quit

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