Camryn Pryor is a natural. There’s really no other way to say it. When you’re just six years removed from considering yourself more of a basketball player and now, as a senior, you hold nearly every major softball batting record at Salem—a Class 3 school—yeah, you’re a natural.
Today, the Salem senior finds herself as a captain of an 11-1 softball team looking for its fifth consecutive SCA title. She also finds herself creeping closer to her fifth all-time record at Salem with her 29 career doubles just six two-baggers off the top mark.
Currently, Pryor sits atop the record books at Salem in singles (87), home runs (14), hits (132) and RBIs (125). But that’s just the all-time marks. Pryor holds single-season records in average (.570), slugging (.870), doubles (13-tie), home runs (9), hits (49) and RBIs (56).
“Part of me would really like that doubles record,” she said. “But I’ve got a lot of records to start out with.”
True. But why stop there?
Currently batting .610 through 12 games, her final season is far from through, and that batting average record she set in 2015 might just get demolished as well. Surprisingly, however, softball wasn’t a game that Pryor was immediately taken by before high school.
“I really didn't think much about softball in my early years,” Pryor said. “Then freshman year I ended up having the highest batting average on the team.”
How quaint.
Pryor started off her freshman year hitting seventh in the lineup. The skill was there, but the softball smarts needed some fine-tuning. Even so, she led the team in hitting as a freshman and followed that up with breaking the school’s single-season home run record as a sophomore. By her junior year, pitchers started recognizing that skill, and things changed. Sort of.
“Ever since my sophomore year when I broke the home run record, pitchers didn't really want to throw to me,” Pryor said. “I learned I was good enough to be patient. If I was good enough to be taking walks, that’s what it was going to come down to.”
That patience and approach at the plate has ballooned her average and on-base percentage (currently a team-high .686), even if her home run numbers have taken a hit thanks to those now ever-so cautious pitchers.
“There’s nothing like having someone like her in the middle of the lineup,” Salem coach Don Smith said. “Camryn has an outstanding approach to hitting. A lot of teams have pitched around her, low and away and slow. But when they have to go into the strike zone, she drives it.”
This year, Pryor isn’t alone with that trait. Shelby Carr (.591 avg.) leads the Tigers in hits with 26 (Pryor has 25). Bekah Kirker (.538 avg.) is tops in RBIs with 19 (Pryor has 17). A pair of Tigers have a pair of home runs (Kirker and Payton Curley). And on the pitching end, Kari Hatridge has been fantastic (7-0, 1.36 ERA, 53 Ks, 41.1 IP). Add in a .415 team batting average and the Tigers are starting to look like a legitimate threat for their first ever district title.
“We can go as far as we want to go,” Pryor said. “I want to win districts. We came so close last year. It hurt. This year, that’s our No. 1 goal. We can beat about any team. A lot of our girls are very skilled. We’re not just a straight power team. Anyone can do anything at any given moment to win a ballgame.”
The Tigers proved that to be true in their 11th win of the season, coming back from a 1-0 deficit to win 3-1 over a very strong Willow Springs team behind an excellent pitching performance by Hatridge and Pryor’s first home run of her senior campaign.
Pryor, who committed to Fort Scott Community College softball earlier this summer after a visit at their camp in Kansas, does it right off the field as well. She’s currently a member of the National Honor Society and, with a GPA in the top 10 percent of her graduating class, has plenty to look forward to. But for now, she’s just appreciating the moment.
“I started off not really knowing what was going to happen with my career here, but I’m glad that God has put me where I am today with the teammates I have,” she said. “They’re all my best friends to me. On and off the field.”
