Top Performances From The Start Of Fall Tournaments

Summer, the peak of recruiting season for most college coaches, may be over. But there are also prestigious tournaments all over the United States throughout the fall, and players have plenty of chances to raise their stocks and attract the attention of college coaches.   Below, Prep Softball highlights five players who have been on fire since the start of the fall season with both their high school and travel teams.    There aren't too many slap-hitting catchers who can put pressure on defenses and force them into errors, but Kaylani Meadows is a unique player. She batted .326 as a high school freshman last spring, walking more often than she struck out. Defensively, Meadows is off to a great start this fall, and her arm frequently deters baserunners from even thinking about stealing. She also had no passed balls and no steal attempts against her in nine innings at a recent tournament. She can bunt, slap and hit away, often surprising pulled-in infielders expecting her to bunt or slap by hitting the ball hard past them. Meadows used all of those skills in Colorado over the summer, where she hit .526 with 10 hits and seven runs scored in seven games to go along with a perfect fielding percentage.     At Mater Dei, a school known as an athletics powerhouse, Arianna Larios played at the junior varsity level as a freshman, but her statistics suggest she would have done just fine on the varsity team. She batted .567 in 20 games with 14 doubles, four triples, five home runs, 33 RBI and 31 runs scored, good for a 1.176 OPS. Larios was just as dominant in the pitcher's circle, recording a 13-2 record and a 1.20 ERA in 93 2/3 innings with 137 strikeouts against just 26 walks. She also held opponents to a .207 average and did not make an error all season. Larios likes to work down in the zone with excellent off-speed pitches and good movement to both the arm side and glove side. At the plate, she has a smooth, explosive swing that can send the ball over the fence to any part of the yard.     Skyler Nakasone has all the tools: she throws the ball hard, hits the ball hard and runs fast. Her arm strength at shortstop stands out, as she can throw runners out at first base from her knees after making a diving stop on a ground ball up the middle. Nakasone also charges slow rollers and fields short hops well, and can make a strong, accurate throw from an off-balance position. Batting from the left side, she can leg out infield hits and turn line drives in the gaps into triples, and she also has an outstanding sense of the strike zone. Her overhand throw has been clocked at 67 miles per hour, while her exit velocity has reached 77. She has an impressive 2.8-second home-to-first time and also carries a 4.0 GPA.     Aubrey Joiner burst onto the scene with a .468 batting average and a 1.230 OPS as a high school freshman last spring. She swings with an uppercut motion and has big-time power that should only improve as she builds more strength, and she can also hit slicing line drives to the opposite field on pitches tailing away from her. Joiner played for Team USA's 16U squad at the Triple Crown International Challenge in June, hitting a double and a sacrifice fly in a win over Mexico. She barely needs to use her legs at all when throwing out runners from behind the plate, firing the ball to second base from a squatting position. Her mail has been pouring in from top programs across the country, and that will surely not slow down anytime soon.     Addie Jensen has already made a huge leap forward early in her sophomore season. She hit .348 as a freshman and has raised that mark to .450 through 11 games this fall high school softball season, and already has six doubles, a triple and her first high school home run as well as a 1.213 OPS. After pitching to a 4.09 ERA last year, she has taken on a much bigger workload and has a 2.90 ERA in 58 innings as of this writing, which is particularly impressive in Colorado, where the high altitude makes pitching difficult. In fact, she leads her school's league in ERA and ranks second in strikeouts with 66. A shortstop when she is not in the circle, Jensen is a smooth defender up the middle, and she has a well-developed hit tool, spraying line drives and hard grounders to all fields.

Summer, the peak of recruiting season for most college coaches, may be over. But there are also prestigious tournaments all over the United States throughout the fall, and players have plenty of chances to raise their stocks and attract the attention of college coaches.