No surprise, Alvelo continues to be elite at the next level

Covering high school sports for 25 years, I have seen my share of great athletes.

Looking back, I realized that just about every team, regardless of what sport, has at least one outstanding player, and sometimes more. I have covered teams that have won state championships and players that have won individual state titles.

However, and this isn’t meant to be a knock, but very few of the players I’ve covered in high school during my 25-year career have been elite, meaning they were big-time Division I college recruits. Matter of fact, I can probably name them on one hand.

Which brings me to former Bloom-Carroll pitcher Taran Alvelo. She was elite in high school, but she has taken it to another level pitching for the No. 1-ranked team in the country – the Washington Huskies.

Washington is 41-2 and Alvelo, a junior, is a big reason why the Huskies are the top-ranked team. She has 21-1 record with a 0.73 earned run average and has two saves. She has 201 strikeouts in 142.1 innings pitched. She has 19 complete games and opponents have a poultry .113 batting average against her. In 10 of her wins, she has struck out at 10 or more batters. In 17 of her wins, she has given up only two hits or less.

Does it get any more elite than that? No, it doesn’t, especially when you consider she is doing it against the best competition in the country.

The first time I saw Alvelo pitch was when she led the Bulldogs to the Division III state championship her sophomore year. I wasn’t covering her then. I just happened to be in the stands early for the next game I was covering for the Newark Advocate.

Little did I know at the time, I would be transferred to the Eagle-Gazette and would cover her final two years of high school softball. I obviously knew she was an outstanding talent, but didn’t really get it until I started covering her on a regular basis.

I knew she must have been good because she had already verbally committed to play for the University of Washington, and as I would soon find out, she was rated as one of the top high school pitchers in the country.

It wasn’t until I saw her pitch her junior year that I realized she was not only elite, but the most celebrated high school athlete I have ever covered. Again, I’ve seen my share of outstanding high school athletes, but Alvelo was different. She dominated and she had a presence about her that I had never seen.

I knew right away she was a special talent. She led Bloom-Carroll to four consecutive state championship games. She had tons of no-hitters and several perfect games in high school while usually averaging between 12-to-16 strikeouts per game. She broke a state record when she struck out 24 batters in the 2014 state championship game the Bulldogs lost 1-0 in 14 innings.

She broke Ohio's all-time career strikeout record in 2015 with 1,515 career strikeouts and tied the state record for career wins at 108.

Again, what she accomplished in high school was elite. I have never covered anyone that dominated a sport like she did. However, you never know how that success will transfer to the next level.

But in this case, I knew Alvelo would succeed because when she was in the circle, she had the ability to block out whatever noise was going on around her. She is as mentally tough as they come. For those reasons, I had no doubt she would have success at Washington.

In two-plus seasons at Washington, Alvelo has 74 wins and 554 strikeouts.

It’s not every day you get to cover an elite athlete, but I’m glad I was able to cover Alvelo. The one thing I noticed when I first started covering her was she was always smiling between pitches. I always thought how can someone who is so dominating flip the switch and become laser-focused?

Alvelo has never let her failures on or off the field wear her down, mainly because she is as resilient as they come.

Keep smiling, Taran —  and keep being elite.

twilson@lancastereaglegazette.com

740-681-4358

Twitter: @twil2323