Silver City's Ajia Richard has UTEP softball on verge of making postseason
Ajia Richard has spent most of her softball life as one of the youngest players on a team, the prodigy who played above her age group since she was a 4-year-old T-ball player.
UTEP's star third baseman from Silver City, N.M., now a college junior, has inevitably grown out of that, and most importantly, she's brought her team with her.
Her best season as a Miner is the team's best of this decade and this weekend against first-place Liberty, UTEP can wrap up its first Conference USA tournament berth since 2019. That would mark its third postseason of the last 14 years for a program starved for, and starting to find, success.
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If UTEP gets there — six teams make the tournament and the Miners are four games up on seventh with six to play — Richard will be a major reason. In her third year as an every-game starter she leads her 23-15 team with a .385 average.
"It's so fun," Richard said. "We come out every day with a positive attitude, great energy, it's a great environment to be in. It would be so exciting (to make the postseason), we haven't made it there.
"This year we've had a lot of players of the week, we've been involved in ways we've never been before. It's all so exciting."
She was one of those CUSA players of the week in mid-March as this UTEP team has stacked up some milestones. A big part of that is Richard evolving into a leader, something which has come naturally for someone who has always been one of the best players on her team.
"I love it, I love to be somebody my team can rely on," Richard said. "That's a role I've taken on since my freshman year, having a starting role. It's exciting, it's a blessing. I've worked really hard to be a starter. That's awesome."
Her coach TJ Hubbard has seen that every day.
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"She's obviously a fantastic performer athlete on the field, she's done a great job from her freshman year to now in terms of her growth and development," he said. "She's grown from a leadership perspective.
"She's a player other players, whether they're younger than her, older than her, look to for advice and direction. She's done a great job all three years and this year is one of her best years to date."
Richard has done it in a place she's comfortable. She grew up wanting to be a Miner in a city that includes quite a bit of family. She has a set of grandparents here, as well as her uncle Juan Camacho, the baseball coach at Bowie, and cousins Juan and Johan Camacho. Juan is on the UTEP football team and John is a current Bowie multi-sport star.
El Paso "is like a second home," Richard said. "It's my home away from home."
On the field she's found a new home. After playing shortstop her entire life, she was moved to third in the middle of last season and to her surprise found out she liked it more.
"Last year I struggled with the middle infield and they moved me to third base," Richard said. "But in all honesty, I like it better than shortstop and I had never played there. It's been an exciting move for me.
"You have less time to react on balls, that's the toughest. I love it more than I liked shortstop."
Her biggest asset for UTEP, though, is her bat. She leads the team in hitting (.385), RBIs (36), home runs (nine), runs (28), hits (47), slugging (.738) and OPS (1.177).
"Her pitch selection," Hubbard said of what makes her such a good hitter. "She does a lot of prep work, does a lot of scouting-report reading to put herself in the best position. She's a competitor, that's a kid you want in the box with the game on the line."
Richard agrees that her success has to do with work.
"The offseason," she said. "We worked hard in the offseason trying to perfect my swing, to take things one pitch at a time, don't get ahead of myself. That's when I'm most successful.
"It's more trusting what I put in in the offseason. You can make little tweaks, but you have to trust that everything you did in the offseason is paying off. Don't look back, look forward."
That path in front of UTEP is more promising than it's been in years. They were led there by a junior from Silver City coming into her own.
Bret Bloomquist can be reached at bbloomquist@elpasotimes.com; @Bretbloomquist on Twitter.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Ajia Richard has UTEP softball on verge of making postseason
