Corinna Arellano felt a sense of pride as she rose from her bucket in the dugout while her teammate stepped to the plate.  Palmer Ridge had its final at-bat of the season and a shot to advance to the 4A state softball tournament finals at Aurora Sports Park in September.  The Bears trailed a ll game until Arellano’s solo homer in the sixth inning tied the semifinals game with Holy Family at 1-all.  Palmer Ridge went into extra innings and fell 4-2 in the semis to the eventual state champs. But Arellano cherished every moment of the Bears’ final game. Especially following an arduous junior season where this year’s Gazette Preps softball Peak Performer fell ill.  “Last year, in the middle of the season, she developed walking pneumonia and mono,” Palmer Ridge coach Dion Arellano said. “I kept getting on her and asking ‘Why does it seem like you’re not running from first to second? Why are you dogging it?’ At that time, we didn’t know she was sick. But she told me her legs felt weak and finally her mom took her to the doctor and we learned that for three weeks she had walking pneumonia and mono.”  Arellano recognized the issue during the Bears’ 2024 league opener at Discovery Canyon.  “I had felt flu-like symptoms such as fatigue and weakness,” Arellano said. “But also it was the beginning of the school year and people get sick a lot and I didn’t think much of it. I thought I just needed rest.”  Dion, who is also Arellano’s father, shifted from coaching his player to comforting his daughter. Arellano received antibiotics to help rid her of the illness and received adequate rest to return to the Bears’ softball team. And as symptoms disappeared, Arellano’s game reflected that healing.  “From that point and through the summer of 2025, she was killing it,” Dion said. “As a family and as a coach, we’re not looking for excuses for any of our girls. We didn’t tell anyone about that because you have to work through challenges. It could be walking pneumonia and mono, a sore foot, or a sore arm. We encourage our players to recognize that and take accountability and work through it.”  Arellano finished her junior year with 51 hits, 56 RBIs, 44 runs, a .560 batting average and helped lead Palmer Ridge to its first playoff victory and best record in team history.  Palmer Ridge’s Corinna Arellano is the 2025 Peak Performer of the Year in softball. (The Gazette, Christian Murdock) Despite those achievements, Arellano felt “unaccomplished” after her penultimate season.  “I had as many home runs as I expected and I performed as well as I expected,” Arellano said. “But I still felt that the way it ended that I had more to give. I’m grateful I had another season but without knowing what the outcome of this year would be, it started to click in all of the offseason work. There was a sense of, there’s work to be done.” Following girls basketball season, Arellano returned to softball with her club team, the Colorado Force, and spent copious hours at D-Bat, which Dion owns.  The work began to show via Arellano’s X profile: half-a-dozen RBIs and a pair of homers in one game, nine hits and two home runs at another tournament.  “It felt like she was hitting at least one home run per game,” the coach said. “If she wasn’t playing, she was hitting every day. And I thought if she continued hitting like that, it’s going to be an amazing high school season.”  Arellano attributed her continued growth to Nick Green, a trainer at D-Bat. Green had played eight MLB seasons. He trained Arellano and improved her discipline with simple exercises that required intense focus.   During their lift days, Green had Arellano do 500 or 1,000 reps of an exercise, such as a squat, with the crux of the work out revolving around counting to the desired rep without losing focus.  “If we forgot our number, we’d have to restart,” Arellano said. “There are times where he gives us grace with counting and he’ll say ‘I’m thinking of a number between 1 and 10.’ Depending on the day, if you guess wrong, he’ll make you restart. But there were times where he’d let us do just five or 10 more. It was tough but it instilled discipline. It’s important to be right at the little things, but it proves the discipline and focus he’s trying to build. It translated to my performance on the field.”  Arellano entered her senior campaign on fire and had three of the Bears’ seven homers through five games after hitting nine as a junior.  The senior second baseman also led the Bears in: batting average (.560), on-base percentage (.615), home runs (14), hits (51), RBIs (56), and slugging percentage (1.176).  Arellano’s RBI total was ninth in the nation, her 14 homers 11th nationally and her slugging percentage 41st.  Just one year after the Bears set the team record for wins in a season, they finished 23-5 with a trip to the semifinals.  Arellano had at least two hits in each of the Bears’ final state playoff games, including her homer against Holy Family to keep Palmer Ridge’s season alive.  “I was so proud and emotional because, yeah, it’s coming to an end. But I was so proud of where we were,” Arellano said. “After the game there was a moment of pure happiness from everyone getting us to where we were we had so much to prove and we did it. (Peak Performer) is as much of a title to me as it is for them. I’m getting the recognition that I’m getting and I’m in the positions that I’m in because of their hard work and the affect they’ve had on my performances.” ...read more read less