Entering her final regular season home games, Leslie Reed is looking forward to life after softball.

Yet the fifth-year Mesa State College senior wants to take care of some unfinished business before she pulls off her Mavericks uniform for the last time.

“At the end of the day what would make me happiest is a (Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference) championship and a bid to the NCAA regional tournament,” Reed said. “Because this team’s got something to prove.”

A fact Reed knows personally.

Last season Reed was on the way to an outstanding season. In the first four games of the 2007 year, she was batting .500 along with belting a thunderous home run off the second story of adjoining Saunders Fieldhouse on the Mavericks’ old field.
Reed’s season came to abrupt halt after breaking a hand. Reed was granted an extra year when Mavericks coach Kris Mort successfully obtained a medical hardship for her starting center fielder.

“It was hard. Very hard,” Reed said of watching her team play from the stands. “I don’t think there was a game when I wouldn’t tear up a little bit. I just wanted to get out there and play. It was really, really hard not being a part of it.”

Reed said it was hard to see that group of seniors she was recruited with leave. But was glad to have another year to play.

“It was hard to see them go. But at the same time at the end of (last) year I told myself I had another chance to do something great.”

Reed’s return has indeed been great for the 2008 Mavericks. In 36 starts. Reed is the team leader with a .378 batting average, she is second in home runs with seven, and she is among the team leaders in hits, runs scored, doubles and RBI.

Reed was the last person to expect to put up those types of power numbers after committing to play at Mesa State from Fruita Monument High School five years ago.

“Coming in as a freshman, I was a slapper and bunted from the left side,” she recalled. A knee injury in her sophomore year forced a change.

“I lost a step going to first. That’s when I started to take a different approach in going for a little more power. By my junior year, I think I slapped once. Now I’ll try to drag bunt once in awhile. But I don’t slap at all.”

Even though Reed’s now looked upon as a power hitter, she admits shock after watching a ball clear the fence.

“Every time I hit it out, I’m surprised,” she said.

Mort saw the change coming.

“In her sophomore year she had developed the swing. She got really close to the fence in Pueblo. Then next at bat she hit one over the center field wall,” Mort said.

The blast was Reed’s lone home in 2005. She hit seven the following year.

As she achieved success individually, Reed’s teams couldn’t advance beyond the RMAC postseason tournament. This year, Reed said she feels the ’08 Mavericks have the right stuff to continue playing beyond this year’s conference tournament.

“I really feel that we haven’t peaked yet. I feel there’s a lot of potential that has not been tapped into. As the season comes to an end, I keep thinking we’ve haven’t proven anything yet. We’ve been building toward something all year. And it just hasn’t clicked yet. That’s all we can ask for,” she said.

“We just need to stay positive. Learn from everything that happens this season and everyone get better personally, and put it together on the field during (the RMAC) tournament and make it to regionals.”