Former Naples High star Cheyenne Jenks still competing as she enters FGCU Hall of Fame
Cheyenne Jenks still likes to compete.
Co-rec softball on Wednesdays.
State Body Building’s Figure Division in the National Physique Committee.
Playing pickleball with her boyfriend.
“He taught me to play and now I’m usually asking him to play every, single day,” she said. “He’s a very good athlete but slowly I’m starting to beat him more and more, which he’s not happy about.”
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Such comments probably will elicit huge smiles and head nods from those who know Jenks, who will be inducted into the school’s second Hall of Fame Class Friday alongside former All-American teammate Carmen Paez, Major League Baseball players Casey Coleman and Richard Bleier, and PGA golfer Derek Lamely. She was previously inducted into the ASUN Conference Hall of Fame in 2020.
There are a number of stories of Jenks’ competitiveness but FGCU softball coach Dave Deiros’ favorite is how she evolved as a hitter.
In Jenks’ first two years, when the Eagles were in Division II, she hit .321 and .372, respectively, with a combined 16 homers and 80 RBI.
In her final two years, when FGCU rose to Division I, she elevated to .398 and .473 with 39 homers and 146 RBI.
“She’s one of the best competitors I’ve ever coached,” Deiros said. “All I can tell you is this. Not very many people in the country, when their competition ramped up, their performance followed suit. Who does that? It’s a credit to her and how much of a competitor she is.”
Jenks said when forced to rise to the occasion, “I’m going to rise up. I don’t like people being better than me in things.”
She also liked proving foes wrong.
“It was always the running joke when people played us was that they didn’t know FGCU,” Jenks recalled. “FGC who? And then we’d beat them.”
In four seasons that she played, FGCU went a phenomenal 215-42 (.837).
Fire burns early
As a little girl, Jenks remembers her mother Patricia playing with her on the beach and father Peter teaching her how to play racquetball. While standing in the kitchen, they’d throw things back and forth.
And it was her father who fanned her competitive fire.
“We’d see how fast I could climb a tree,” she said. “He timed me and said ’32 seconds, you can do it faster.’ And I said, ‘I can do it faster.’ “
As a youth, she played volleyball, basketball, soccer and softball. She was part of a 13- and 14-year-old junior team that won back-to-back world fastpitch titles.
“It was truly a big deal,” she said. “We played teams from the Philippines, Aruba, and Canada.”
But when she and her talented teammates joined the Naples High team, coach Robert Iamurri (now the head at FSW) wasn’t just going to automatically make them starters on varsity because the team only lost three starters from a state-championship team.
“I felt it was the returners’ jobs to lose,” Iamurri said. “I told Cheyenne, ‘Look, you’re a competitor but trust the process. The cream will rise to the top at the end.
“There are competitors and there are those who are determined. She’s both.”
Cheyenne started on the junior varsity but moved to varsity within a week. Shortly after the games began, she started.
“I remembered, ‘OK, well, being on JV is not good enough for me'," she said. “I will rise to the top and be the starting third baseman. That never deterred me. I just went to practice, showed up and worked hard.
“I remember a teammate didn’t like me because I took her job. I thought, ‘Well, work harder'.“
At 5-foot-10, Cheyenne became an all-state goalkeeper in soccer but that sport ended when she tore her anterior cruciate ligament her junior season.
She chose to attend Florida State and play softball but quickly transferred when the Seminoles wanted her to play catcher, a position she rarely played.
“I remember running into her by accident at a 7-Eleven getting a Slurpee,” Deiros said. “Shortly after that, she contacted me. She didn’t like what her role was.”
And Derios joked, “We definitely had a spot.”
Shortly after she arrived at FGCU, Cheyenne was roaming the halls when she ran into volleyball coach Jaye Flood. “She said, ‘What are you doing here?’“ Jenks recalled. “When I told her, she said, ‘Why don’t you play volleyball, too?”
Jenks notched 146 kills and 231 digs in a senior season that saw the Eagles win their second-straight ASUN regular season championship.
But it was softball where she really starred.
Jenks originally batted before Paez, Deiros said, but by her junior year, Paez hit before Jenks.
Part of the reason was that Jenks went from nine homers to 16 between her sophomore and junior seasons.
Cheyenne helped FGCU post wins of 58, 62, 48 and 47 wins, which included five Division II tourney victories and an ASUN Conference Championship in their inaugural season of Division I in 2008.
After her career ended, Jenks was drafted by the Chicago Bandits for softball before she continued her career in Italy.
After pro softball ended, she returned home where she and her father combined to win a Naples Great Dock Canoe race. She also got involved in Cross Fit.
Unfortunately, her mother died of breast cancer two years ago.
“She was my No. 1 fan,” Jenks said. “She’d bring me snacks between games. She pushed me but she never had to force me to play sports.”
And to this day, competing has given her a variety of feelings.
“I guess I love the adrenaline rush, I love the challenge in the things I’ve chosen to compete at,” she said. “It’s a satisfying feeling. If I don’t win, I just say I’m gonna get better. You learn to better yourself and you figure it out.”
Jenks' favorite FGCU playing moments
∙ After going 0-of-3 with three strikeouts, Cheyenne hit a three-run homer against Hofstra in a 3-2 victory on March 14, 2009. “The Hofstra pitcher was absolutely shutting me down. I didn’t strike out a lot in college and made a lot of contact but I may have fouled off one pitch. Totally dominated. But the crowd had my back. As I walked up, they helped me and said, ‘You are the one we want at the plate.’ I kept my hands nice and high. I made solid contact and it was no doubt, I drove the pitch the other way. That felt really good.”
· Cheyenne hit a home run in a tournament game in Hawaii in 2009. “We were playing great in a tournament but in this one game, we were losing. We should have not been losing that game. I remember sitting in the dugout. I closed my eyes and said, ‘OK, Cheyenne, they’re going to give you nothing, pitches are going to be down and away because they know you like inside pitches. I drove it the other way. It was the only time to the plate with the intention of hitting a home run.”
· Cheyenne hit two home runs while pitchers tried to intentionally walk her. “Coach Deiros wasn’t happy with me. The first one was Stetson. Now the catcher wasn’t standing up and putting her arm out but they were throwing in my face. On the next pitch, I crossed the plate and I hit it a mile high. It only landed 6 or 7 feet over the fence. Then, in a home game vs. USC-Upstate, I hacked at a ball by my eyeballs. I looked at coach DD and smoke was coming out of his ears. He was absolutely furious. But I was really frustrated. There were a lot of conference games where they were walking me. I wanted to play. I wanted to compete.”
This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Former softball star Cheyenne Jenks still competing as she enters FGCU Hall of Fame
