Laura Espinoza’s first hit as an Arizona Wildcat was a slow roller between third and short at the school’s old Gittings Field. It scored the winning run in the UA’s victory over Illinois-Chicago but it would be misleading to say a star was born.
Espinoza, a freshman shortstop from Wilmington, California, hit .176 in the UA’s fall softball season, was injured in a car rollover on Interstate 10, and battled with teammate Lisa Guise to replace All-America shortstop Julie Standering.
Espinoza ultimately won that competition, hit .278 as a freshman, and although it is now difficult to comprehend, led the Pac-10 with six home runs.
A year earlier, 1991, Arizona won the national championship with five home runs. Total.
Oh, how Laura Espinoza would change all of that.
By the time she left the UA in 1995, Espinoza hit 37 home runs in a season, a record that has not been seriously challenged over a quarter-century. She drove in 128 runs that year. No one else in NCAA softball history has gone beyond 109.
She was a figure of such prominence that Sports Illustrated referred to her as the “Sultana of Swat.”
Nowadays, Laura Espinoza-Watson simply goes by “mom” and “coach.” She does not enter lightly into a conversation about home runs and All-America awards and NCAA championships.
“The way I look at it, I hit two home runs in my life — my daughter (Kristiana) and my son (David Jr.),” she says on a day she stages two practices, morning and night, for her travel ball softball organization, the Tucson ThunderCats. “A lot of people bring up the records, but I honestly don’t follow it. Records are made to be broken. If someone breaks those records some day, it won’t change who I am or what I did.”
Espinoza-Watson was almost an accidental Senorita Swat, another name often used in reference to her Arizona career (1992-95).
She didn’t start playing travel ball until she was 15. Her first scholarship offer was from Pacific.
“I was a kid from the street,” she remembers. “We played rec ball, stick ball. I played baseball with boys. I just played for the love of the game. My dad had me playing T-ball when I was 6, but I didn’t expect anything to happen the way it did.”
Laura Espinoza drove in a record 128 runs in 1995.
She actually chose to enroll at Arizona because the Wildcats were then considered underdogs.
“They weren’t up there with the big dogs of the day — UCLA, Cal-Fullerton and Fresno State,” she says. “But I liked the challenge and I had a lot of family in Tucson.”
But by the time Espinoza-Watson left Arizona, the Wildcats had won three NCAA championships and were playing at the new Hillenbrand Stadium, then the Taj Mahal of college softball.
It wasn’t the Stadium that Laura Built — the UA had star-power all through the lineup — and Espinoza-Watson is too modest to discuss her impact and the way the game has changed, from 1-0 pitching duels to home run-fueled entertainment. She does not live in the past.
In 1996, she married Arizona offensive linemen David Watson. Both are now on the faculty at Amphitheater High School. Their son, David Jr., like his father, is a lineman on the UA football team. Kristiana, who hit a combined .731 with 31 home runs in her first two seasons of high school softball, is considered one of the most elite softball prospects in the country. She is entering her senior season at Amphi.
Espinoza-Watson’s post-UA career has been anything but fading-off-in-the-sunset.
She played professional baseball for the Colorado Silver Bullets — she once hit a double off the Green Monster in Fenway Park — returned home to be the head coach at her alma mater Banning High School’s softball team, and has coached in the college level, at Loyola Marymount, and at Empire High School.
From 1995-02, she created the Arizona Alleycats travel ball team, an organization so productive that she coached them to a 356-32 record, which included the 2001 national championship for 18U players. After returning to Tucson, Espinoza-Watson started another travel ball operation, the ThunderCats.
Those she has coached have gone on to play for Stanford, Washington, Arizona State, San Diego State, Rutgers, Colgate, Army and to all parts of the softball map.
“I’ve always embraced Tucson, and not just because of softball,” she says. “I have 36 first-generation cousins and all but about 15 of us live in Tucson. This is home.”
Espinoza-Watson got into coaching at the urging of Arizona coach Mike Candrea and her father, Marco.
“They told me I had a great opportunity to give back to the community; it appealed to me,” she says. “Tucson gave me so much and I remain grateful. I’m not in this to win games and championships, I’m in it to help teach life’s lessons. I’ve had some girls eight years. It’s one big family.
“I gotten a lot more out of that than hitting home runs.”
