Darian Tautalafua breaking records for Long Beach State softball

Before Darian Tautalafua was breaking Long Beach State and Big West Conference softball records, she needed to lea how to navigate a field.

“My very first time playing T-ball, I was playing at second base and I went to the wrong side of the base,” Tautalafua said. “And my first at-bat, I held the bat upside down. So I’ve come a long way.”

It’s safe to say that she has, in fact, come a long way.

Tautalafua, now a senior infielder, holds the 49ers’ all-time records in career home runs and RBIs. Last weekend, she added to her legendary resume by hitting four home runs in a doubleheader at UC Davis to break the Big West Conference record for career home runs. Tautalafua now has 49 home runs, one more than former record holder Yasmin Mossadeghi from Cal State Fullerton.

Tautalafua is athletic, dynamic at the plate and passionate about her teammates. But if you ask her about finding her love of softball, she had to lea more than just the right way to hold bat. To get to this position, she had to combine everything she leaed in backyard games with her family and everything she leaed at Long Beach State with the mental part of the game to become a more complete player.

“I wasn’t really aiming to break anything, I was just trying to play to the best of my abilities,” Tautalafua said. “But I think the mental aspect of my game mostly has improved this season. I’m just trying not to do too much at the plate.”

Tautalafua saw a big boost in her batting average after improving her plate discipline. The home run power was always there - she hit 13 homers in each of her first two seasons at Long Beach State - but she wasn’t always hitting consistently for average.

Working with her father, David, and her coaches at Long Beach State, Tautalafua took the edge off of her approach at the plate. Often times, she came up to bat with her head full of instructions, intent on using every technique she had been taught. But it became too much.

David taught her to think more about the pitches that she was seeing and at what points in the count that she was seeing them.

“Just helping me think about which pitches to hit, when to attack them early in the count,” she said. “He’s me and my sister’s personal coach. He’s been coaching us all of our lives.”

Tautalafua says her father is a lifelong athlete who was the primary organizer of the backyard baseball games. Tautalafua, her sister Briaa and two brothers were outside of their Carson home playing constantly growing up.

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“Every single day,” Tautalafua said. “If we weren’t on the field actually playing, we were in the front yard or in the backyard playing catch, throwing the whiffle ball, stuff like that. He couldn’t get us to put all of the stuff down and come into the house.”

Those family games also helped Tautalafua when she made her switch from the outfield to third base. Seeing that her team needed a key position filled, she stepped up and made the move. She moved to third base as a sophomore and it wasn’t exactly what she wanted. She made more errors than she would have liked and wasn’t confident.

“It was mostly to help the team. It didn’t really matter to me where I played, it was just wherever they needed me,” Tautalafua said. “I worked on getting quicker with my feet. Balls get hit really hard there so it was kind of hard to react.”

In order to prep herself for playing every day in the infield, she worked daily with David and Briaa, a lifelong infielder, and joined a women’s league in the offseason. The reps she took with them aided in building her confidence.

Tautalafua says the way Briaa helped her lea a new position shows how much the relationship has grown. They aren’t quite as competitive anymore. Instead, the two want to help bring out the best in one another.

So yes, Tautalafua has come a long way since that first day in T-ball. But she couldn’t have gone from ruing the wrong way to ruing all around the bases without the help of her family.

Long Beach State hosts Cal Poly this weekend and the doubleheader at the LBSU Softball Complex will start at 1 p.m. on Saturday.