Jennie Finch Empowerment Award goes to catcher Jada Cooper

Jada Cooper, a participant on this 12 months’s Jennie Finch Classic throughout All-Star Week in Seattle, was just lately chosen because the second of 4 recipients to earn this 12 months’s esteemed Jennie Finch Empowerment Award.

This award, which comes with a $10,000 scholarship test and a visit to the 2023 World Sequence, is given to a teenage softball participant who isn’t solely an incredible athlete, but in addition a scholar and a humanitarian. Out of the six traits of the Arm & Hammer JFEA — humility, dedication, motivation, management, dedication and integrity — humility and motivation are essentially the most evident in Cooper.

She talked about the place these come from and her mother’s response after she advised her she gained the award.

“It’s so hype to be round [these players]as a result of, like this household and this surroundings, it makes me so significantly better as a participant,” Cooper stated. “My motivation — my mother day-after-day … I do know she might be crying proper now. She is so excited. She will’t wait to see me once I get again residence.”

A 3-sport varsity athlete (softball, basketball and volleyball), Cooper can play something and all the pieces at a excessive degree. She is a 17-year-old catcher and utility infielder for the Westside Wolves Excessive Faculty workforce in Houston. As well as, she can be part of the Houston Astros Youth Academy. She has been a important piece for her native youth academy, as she helped lead Houston to the RBI World Sequence championship sport final 12 months.

On the Houston Youth Academy, Cooper was praised for being a humble particular person, even amid all of her athletic success, for at all times being an incredible teammate by motivating those that she performs with to at all times be the perfect that they will, and in the end being the lifetime of the social gathering.

Despite the fact that Cooper was competing in opposition to different athletes when she gained this particular award, she nonetheless acquired an enormous ovation from the opposing groups, the most important celebration that Finch had seen.

Alyssa Arnall, Cooper’s Astros Youth Academy teammate, shared the influence that Cooper has on their workforce.

“She brings us all up, irrespective of how we’re doing within the sport,” Arnall stated. “If we’re down or when you simply had a foul play, she’ll at all times inform you, ‘Decide your head up.’”

Laila Robins, one other one in every of Cooper’s teammates, echoed these praises.

“She’s so in tune with the workforce and really welcoming,” Robins stated. “You undoubtedly want leaders like that to have the ability to push you additional within the sport.”

Cooper is making an influence on the sphere, however an excellent greater one off of it. Not solely does she assist coach youthful athletes on the Astros Youth Academy, however over the previous few summers, Cooper has additionally labored at a camp known as RaiseUp Households. Cooper, who was as soon as a beneficiary of the monetary help program from this group that helps to help younger youngsters that come from single-parent households, additionally helped run a meals drive for these in want.

“It feels actually good to offer again, as a result of I used to be as soon as of their sneakers, and it is like, ‘I’m actual grateful to be right here,’” Cooper stated.

Not solely do her fellow teammates have glowing remarks about her, however Megan Hays, an Astros Youth Academy coordinator, shared her appreciation as nicely for the softball athlete.

“Jada is humble in the truth that irrespective of how she does on that subject, she nonetheless goes in that dugout and tries to select her different teammates up,” she stated. “She motivates the opposite women to be simply nearly as good as she is and nonetheless has that angle of, ‘I’m nonetheless a teammate. We nonetheless need to cheer for one another.’

“Simply the stability of lecturers and softball is so large. … For her to really put that neighborhood service in there as nicely may be very large, however that’s simply who she is. She loves giving again.”

The subsequent step for Cooper is senior 12 months, as she has aspirations of going to school to play softball and main in a business-related subject. That’s why the $10,000 scholarship is so impactful.

“It would assist quite a bit, as a result of I come from a household that basically doesn’t have as a lot as different households do,” Cooper stated. “Like I actually admire the cash — it’s going to assist me slender down some choices.”

“MORE POWER TO YOU” — the Jennie Finch Empowerment Award motto — may be very obvious in Cooper’s life. She is now part of a prestigious group engaged on making an lasting influence not solely on the softball subject, however locally as nicely.