Mike Candrea still has memories of the time Stacy Redondo went wide around home plate to avoid a tag and score a key College World Series run in 1991. There’s also the moment she grabbed an electric shaver to help buzz the hair off the UA softball coach’s head following the Wildcats’ 1993 national championship.
“She got a lot of enjoyment out of that,” said Candrea, who had promised he would allow such a thing if the Wildcats won it all that year.
But the on-field recollections weren’t the biggest memory Candrea expressed Tuesday of his former utility player from Cholla High School, a third-grade teacher at Roskruge Bilingual known as Stacy Redondo-Santa Cruz until she died Monday at age 52 in the aftermath of a stroke.
More than anything, Candrea recalled Redondo-Santa Cruz’s off-field perseverance, and how far she took it.
“She was so resilient,” Candrea said. “She struggled her first year in school. She just didn’t buckle down academically. But then she came back and became an honor student. Now a teacher. I’m just so proud of her.”
Redondo-Santa Cruz actually had to leave UA briefly in 1990 to shore up her academics at Scottsdale Community College,. But she qualified in time to return and play 83 games for the Wildcats’ 1991 national-championship team. She also helped the Wildcats win the title during her senior season of 1993.
Afterward, she balanced both academics and softball in her professional career: While raising three children and starting her teaching career, Redondo spent two stints with Salpointe’s softball team, serving as head coach in 2013 and 2014.
According to her father, Rene Redondo, Redondo-Santa Cruz graduated from UA with a degree in Spanish literature in 1993, while also earning a master’s in Early Childhood Development from NAU.
Rene Redondo said his daughter showed a strong preference for teaching in aptitude tests while he and daughter Jeanne Bass described her as having a magnetic, life-of-the party sort of personality. Fluent in Spanish and English, Redondo-Santa Cruz taught at several Tucson schools, including Drachman Montessori K-8 Magnet School and Roskruge.
She also loved country music. Bass, who also was briefly part of the Arizona softball program in 1995, said the three most important men in her sister’s life were, in order, their father, Candrea and George Strait, though she never knew the country music star.
Despite having a huge softball alumni family from his 36 years as Arizona’s coach, Candrea said he kept up with Redondo-Santa Cruz throughout her life, seeing her at weddings and always contacting her on birthdays.
“That’s one thing sports does is you make friendships for a lifetime,” Candrea said. “It’s whether you win a championship or you don’t, but when you win a championship, it’s an even tighter circle. And we’ve had alumni games and had them all back. It’s been a ton of fun to watch them grow up and raise their families and be a part of that.”
Even though UA softball coach Caitlin Lowe played for the Wildcats from 2004-07, over a decade later than Redondo-Santa Cruz, the bond was noticeable. She said Tuesday “the whole Wildcat community was mourning” and in shock over the news.
“When you’re a Wildcat, even if you don’t know someone and you’re not crazy close with them, you share this common bond,” Lowe said. “I knew her through Arizona softball, the events that we have, passing by her, attending games. Just a Wildcat through and through.”
The country music part stayed with Redondo-Santa Cruz until the end. Jeanne said Stacy attended Country Thunder Arizona last weekend but had headaches on Sunday that led to a late-night hospitalization. They said she had a brain bleed and that doctors were unsure if a stroke caused it or came afterward.
Whatever the case, by Monday afternoon, the Redondo and Arizona families had lost Stacy, who left behind three children (Chad, 25, Justin, 22, and Kali, 16), her sister Jeanne, husband David Santa Cruz, and parents Rene and Alice Redondo. The family has not decided about memorial plans, though UA will hold a moment of silence for Redondo-Santa Cruz during its next home game, on April 28 against Oregon State.
The suddenness of it was especially difficult for Candrea, whose wife, Sue, died in 2004 of a brain aneurysm despite being only 48 and otherwise healthy.
“My phone’s been flooded with former players, all in shock,” Candrea said. “You never expect it to happen. But I went through that with my wife. So I’m a little bit numb to it. I understand how quickly life can change.”
Arizona softball coach Caitlin Lowe reflects on the death of former Wildcat player Stacy Redondo-Santa Cruz (video by Devin Homer / Special to the Arizona Daily Star)
