SAN ANTONIO - Arlette Hernandez’s life has been focused almost exclusively on two circles - the one that surrounds her when she pitches and the one that supports her in all aspects of her life - the core group of important people that includes her family and her teammates.
Her years of hard work and dedication to those closest to her have come full circle as Hernandez, the pitching ace for the UTSA Softball team, nears the end of her freshman season for the Roadrunners.
“The big thing about being a pitcher is that if you have a circle drawn around you, you’d better be the hardest-working player on the team,” UTSA head coach Vann Stuedeman said. “Arlette has embraced that and she works just as hard as everybody else. I think that comes from her family upbringing.”
Family is the central theme that permeates through all aspects of Hernandez’s life and has been the source of her motivation from the very start.
“I’ve just always been so close to my parents,” Hernandez said. “They’ve always been there for me. We’re a Mexican household so everything is always just done together. I have an older brother, an older sister and a younger brother. I think we all just grew very close to each other.”
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Brotherly Love
There is no stronger bond for Hernandez than the one she has her 30-year-old brother Arturo, who has Down syndrome, a genetic condition in which a person is born with an extra copy of chromosome 21, which can affect protein production and development.
Hernandez and her brother have been close her entire life and they became especially tight while attending school in their home of Mission, Texas, a town of 86,000 people in the Rio Grande Valley.
“My older brother Arturo has been one of my biggest motivations and supporters throughout my whole softball career,” Hernandez said. “We went to a school called IDEA Public Schools and I stayed there until 7th grade when my brother graduated. Every morning and after school, I would make sure he got to his class and go get him from his class. I think that’s where our bond grew, just me looking out for him.”
Hernandez has been inspired to take full advantage of all of the opportunities available to her, knowing that many of them weren’t possibilities for her brother.
“I’m playing for him because he didn’t have the opportunity that I have,” Hernandez said. “He did play Special Olympics basketball and enjoys playing basketball outside with my dad and younger brother. Just knowing that I can play for him and make him proud touches my heart and warms my heart.”
Mac Morgan, who won the NCAA Championship as a senior pitcher at the University of Texas in 2025 and is in her first season as the Roadrunners’ pitching coach, has seen the impact Arturo has had on Hernandez since the pair first began working together last fall.
“She’s really out there doing this for her brother,” Morgan said. “Showing him that he can do anything that he wants to do. Seeing her have the love for her brother is so inspiring and inspires me every day. For her to be able to live out her dreams is something I want her to achieve for herself.”
Knowing the relationship that Hernandez has with her brother was one of the indicators that told Stuedeman that the 5-foot-4 right-hander would be a good fit to be a leader in her UTSA Softball program.
“She has a special needs brother and I think it takes a special person to serve in that family role,” Stuedeman said. “She carries herself so well and represents our team so well.”
Hernandez believes that her bond with Arturo has helped her be a great teammate since her arrival in San Antonio.
“I’m able to care for others and put myself in other people’s shoes,” she said. “You never know what anyone else is going through. Having the love for someone that is so close to you is like creating a bond with anyone else - creating a good relationship with a teammate. That really connects.
“To this day, he still calls me every day just to check up on me.”
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Lighting The Way
In many ways, the stage Hernandez occupies at UTSA makes her a trailblazer.
There aren’t many NCAA Division I softball players that hail from the Rio Grande Valley and the opportunities to advance from her hometown to the highest level of the collegiate game have been scarce.
“Down there, we don’t have a Division I college softball program, so I know there are a lot of girls down there trying to find a college where they can call home,” Hernandez said. “I always had so much self-doubt, but I just had to trust the process. I know that I can be a role model to all of those younger kids and athletes down there, telling them that you can do it, trust the process and you will get to where you want to be.”
Knowing Hernandez, it’s no surprise that she found her way to softball - a shared passion of her father Arturo and her sister Arleene - because of her family.
“I fell in love with the sport that my dad used to play,” Hernandez said. “He played baseball and football, and started playing co-ed softball. And then my sister started playing. I would always be at her games even though I would complain about the heat. Somehow I fell in love with the sport.”
Unlike many of her teammates who have been playing travel softball much of their lives, Hernandez didn’t have the collegiate recruiting exposure that a player of her caliber typically would.
“I started the recruiting process very, very late,” Hernandez said. “Where I’m from is not really a place known for recruiting. You really had to go to San Antonio, Houston or Austin to get recruited by any school.”
Hernandez began her travel ball career with the Texas Threat. It was an experience that only strengthened her passion for the sport of softball.
“I had two amazing coaches that helped me at the very beginning,” she said. “I went to California with them. That was the first tournament that I had ever been to. At first, the competition was new to me, but seeing that competition made me even more hungry.”
Hernandez later joined the Hotshots Premier Pacheco team based in San Antonio, coached by Eloy Pacheco.
“He had connections with coaches and he really helped me throughout all of the recruiting process,” she said. “That’s how I found UTSA.”
As a prep player at La Joya High School - a University Interscholastic League Class 6A school of more than 2,600 students, Hernandez claimed a pair of District 31-6A Most Valuable Player accolades, totaling 882 strikeouts and four perfect games. She led her Coyotes team to the state playoffs in each of the three seasons she played with two District Championships, a Bi-District title and an Area Championship.
What most impressed Stuedeman when she was recruiting Hernandez was her prolific ability to strike batters out.
“Arlette kept striking everybody out,” Stuedeman said. “The No. 1 thing you’re looking for in pitchers is swing and misses. You can’t argue with a swing and miss. The next things are how many mishits or barrels does the pitcher give up, and then the spin of the ball. Every time I would go to one of her games, it would swing and misses and mishits. Everybody had a hard time squaring her up.”
UTSA had two of the things that Hernandez was most looking for in her future collegiate experience - proximity to home and an elite coaching staff.
“I had always come to San Antonio for my tournaments or if my brother or sister played,” Hernandez said. “My biggest thing was that I wanted to be close to home. When I came on my visit to UTSA, it kind of reminded me of the Valley, just with more construction and highways. The coaches wanted something for me. They had a plan for me. I think that really caught my attention, especially with being just four hours away from my home.”
In UTSA, Hernandez saw a similar support system to the one that developed her into the player she is today and gave her the persistence needed to achieve her dreams.
“I had coaches along the way who always told me I had something special,” Hernandez said. “My dad would always tell me, ‘We’re not giving up. We’re going to keep going and we’re going to finish this journey.’ I wanted to quit so many times because of performance, but I think my dad really pushed me to be the athlete I am right now and I can always be better.”
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A Fresh Perspective
UTSA’s move to the American Conference in the summer of 2023 coincided with the hire of Stuedeman to revitalize the school’s softball program. Not only would there be a challenge to elevate the trajectory of the program, but it would come in conjunction with an increase in competition.
Inheriting a program that won just eight games the season before her arrival, Stuedeman has engineered a steady ascent that included 15 wins in 2024, 21 victories last season and 23 (and counting) this year.
“The coaches have only been here for three years and it has just gone up from the time that they’ve been here,” Hernandez said. “Their plan is to help us get better and push us forward every single season. It’s exciting because right now it’s just growing.”
Hernandez and her battery mate, catcher Brookelynn Meador, are two freshman starters who are part of the Roadrunners’ five-member rookie class. It is the first full freshman recruiting class recruited entirely by Stuedeman and her staff.
Morgan, who helped lead a consistently strong Texas program into a national champion, knows Hernandez possesses many of the traits of a program-changing player.
“She shows the fight that we have in us,” Morgan said. “The fight’s never done and we’re never counted out of a game. Arlette has been in those hard positions and wants the ball in those positions. She doesn’t want the ball to be taken away from her.”
When Hernandez first came to UTSA, Stuedeman felt her pupil possessed all of the skills necessary to be successful as the team’s No. 1 pitcher. But the head coach also knew that Hernandez had been dominant in the circle all throughout her prep career. Just how would she fare when faced with adversity?
“I knew she had the tools,” Stuedeman said. “The biggest question mark for me was, when she gives up a hit or a home run, how is she going to mentally respond because she’s not used to that.”
The Roadrunners played host to a highly decorated field in the UTSA Invitational, featuring No. 1 Texas, No. 9 Nebraska and No. 25 Washington, to open the season. Hernandez started her first collegiate game on opening day against the Huskies.
That weekend, Hernandez had the opportunity to watch 2025 Women’s College World Series Most Outstanding Player Teagan Kavan from the University of Texas and three-time first-team All-American Jordy Frahm in the circle. It was an experience that was particularly impactful for Hernandez.
“Two of the best pitchers in the country and there were 25 hits in the game,” Stuedeman said. “I think that was something good for her to see. These are two of the best pitchers in the country and they’re giving up hits. She can give up a hit. I think she’s learning that and proving she can handle the stress that it brings and the toughness that you need.”
While that level of competition may have been intimidating for most, Hernandez felt it helped grow her confidence in the way her coach had hoped.
“I think I was very nervous and had a lot of self-doubt - they had a big name on their shirt,” she said. “Since I had all of those experiences, that helped me get ready for the American Conference and helped me grow. Knowing that it’s not only about what’s on the front of the shirt, it’s about pitching to them and knowing what their swing is going to be and what their weaknesses are.”
Hernandez has gained valuable experience as a freshman that will undoubtedly prepare her to elevate the UTSA program throughout her career. She ranks seventh nationally in games started (30), 11th in innings pitched (177.2) and 12th in complete games (18). Hernandez has earned 13 victories in the circle this season for the Roadrunners and has struck out 148 batters, a figure that sits just outside UTSA’s all-time single-season top-10.
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Looking Ahead
By all accounts, Hernandez has an incredibly bright future ahead of her. With the growth of professional softball in the United States, she aspires to one day play at the next level. She plans to become a pitching coach once her playing days are done and hopes that there will one day be a collegiate softball program in the Rio Grande Valley that she can impact.
Hernandez is pursuing her Bachelor in Business Administration degree in Marketing, and is on the Sport, Event and Tourism track, within UT San Antonio’s Carlos Alvarez College of Business.
For now, she’s focused on being the best pitcher she can be for the Roadrunners and helping UTSA’s program ascend to among the nation’s elite.
“I really hope I’m somebody that my teammates can come to and lean on,” Hernandez said. “Even though I’m a freshman, I hope I can be somebody they trust throughout this season and the next three years. We can be one of those teams that makes it to the NCAA Tournament because we’re growing every single day.”
As UTSA prepares to enter the American Conference Tournament next week in Greenville, N.C., Hernandez has been a driving force in the Roadrunners’ growth and will continue to take them to new heights.
“She is learning on the job,” Stuedeman said. “She’s exactly what I want from a pitcher - pluck and grit and fight and determination. She understands where she needs to grow and where she’s excelling. She’s getting everything out of her body she can get, but I see more tools in there. Arlette is the Most Valuable Player, hands down.”
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