Rising Above Doubt: Alexa Cepeda's Path to Embracing Softball

There was a time when playing softball “was my least favorite thing in the world,” recalls senior Viking outfielder Alexa Cepeda.

And that was tough because Cepeda came from a baseball family. Her father Jose had played professionally in farm systems for a couple major league teams and she describes her mother (Gina) as “a tall. Lefty, ex-first baseman”.   

A couple of issues led to her youthful estrangement from the sport. 

She’d set extremely high standards for herself.

“I think I was so ‘down’ about playing softball because it was impossible for me to feel like I had any sort of success because my standards for success were so high,” said the McNary High School product who was an all-everything on her high school softball team.

Also, as a middle-schooler, she played on a high-caliber traveling softball team where players just expected (even at that age) to eventually play Division I university softball. Cepeda said she wasn’t emotionally prepared for the level of ambition and sophistication she found on that team. The “tough love” approach to development was ego crippling.  “I think this is where I developed performance anxiety at a very young age.”

It was an extremely competitive environment.  “I think their extremely competitive nature and college standards were way over my head since I was still a child.”  The concentration on the future and advanced skill levels of some of her teammates helped create an unhealthy level of self-doubt, Cepeda says.

So, she just went through the motions. She had no interest in putting in the extra work and time it would take to get her near her elevated standards and, in her mind, that made her a failure.  “I made valuable connections with teammates, but other than that, I had a horrible relationship with the game.”

The issue was her, not the team.  “That organization was very successful and is well known in the community.  And they did help get me into a great Division 1 program and an environment where I’ve been able to mature and flourish.”

Things began to change in high school, where she lettered four times and was second team all-conference as a freshman, honorable mention as a sophomore and first team as a junior.  Her team won conference titles her sophomore and junior years and Cepeda was McNary Class of 2020 Female Athlete of the year as a senior. She also was on the honor roll all four years.

“I enjoyed my time playing in high school. I got to play with friends.  Everything wasn’t so serious, and my coach (who I adore to this day, Coach Wise) looked to me as a leader in an environment that was forgiving as long as you’re working hard,” she remembers.

The best thing that came from her association with that traveling team was that it brought her to the attention of the Portland State coaching staff.

PSU Head Softball Coach Meadow McWhorter had a connection with the team and watched Cepeda play. “She first caught our eye with her athleticism.  She had multiple tools at the plate and an excellent arm in the OF.”  They liked her as a person, too, and offered the high school sophomore a spot on the Viking team after she graduated from McNary. 

Cepeda knew little about college softball and didn’t like the recruiting process, so she was happy to get it over early. Also, she wanted to play near home and her family comes to every game possible.

“My travel ball coaches had great connections with PSU and Coach (McWhorter) was the one coach who pursued me and was extremely personable from the get-go,” she says.

Then, when she got to PSU, Cepeda took another blow, thanks to Covid. In the beginning here, her world revolved around softball.  Period.

“Then, when I got to Portland State, life was taken away from me.  We were quarantined for five months during our season”.  The time she was allowed to spend with her teammates outside practice was restricted. “Practice was the only time I got to leave my dorm room, and I lived alone,” Cepeda says.

Softball became her singular focus. “I met a group of women who were all passionate over the same thing.  I had a coach who would speak to me about things that I like other than softball, a coach who “saw” me, who could still look at me after I did something horrible in practice.  I felt like a valued human being, and I matured quickly.”

Once again, as in high school, softball became fun.  “I did things I never thought I could do.  That hasn’t happened overnight because I still have to work on separating my athletic performance from self-worth.  But now, as a senior, I can find beauty and strength in something that has always been my biggest weakness and insecurity.  I think that is so powerful.”

McWhorter has particularly enjoyed watching Cepedas’ journey to self-confidence and maturity and says she has been a major asset to the team.

“This game can be challenging. It tests your will and determination.  We play a game that is known for failure.  It can be extremely hard to digest, and can test your love for the game.  The game hasn’t always been great to her, but I have loved her persistence, dedication to herself, her relentlessness and her ability to be her truest self.  She is a competitor,” she says.

Today, says McWhorter, “she swings back and leaves it all on the field.  She is an incredible outfielder who has really come into her own.  She owns the field when she steps onto it and will run through a wall for her team.”

Cepeda started playing T-ball around the time she started school. She played basketball for a year in middle school and ran track (“until I broke my wrist running the 100m dash—haha”).  She played the viola for a year and half in the middle school orchestra and sang in the high school choir. But mainly, it’s been softball.  Because of her dad’s baseball career, “my brother (Anthony) and I have been around the game since we were babies.  We haven’t gotten a break since (Anthony currently plays community college baseball)”.

Cepeda, who also likes to write, is carrying a 3.82 in English and hasn’t decided about the future after graduation this spring…maybe a trip around the world, she says.

And she won’t be the only one watching as post-graduate life unfolds.

“I expect Alexa to be Alexa. We’ve been lucky to witness Alexa change the narrative in her story of this game. She’s writing a beautiful final chapter in her time here at PSU.  It reminds me of a favorite book. You’re so excited to see how it all plays out, but you don’t ever want the story to end,” says McWhorter.