The home runs grabbed headlines, shattering the previous area mark of 11 and leading to All-Pacific League, All-Area Player of the Year and All-CIF honors at season's end.
A .606 average, 60 hits, 57 runs batted in, 46 runs scored and 13 doubles didn't hurt either.
"It was kind of like one of those seasons that no one expects," Kirker says.
So with the 2007 season on the horizon, the question is, what does Kirker do for an encore?
For starters, just showing up to play every game would be a welcomed sign.
Around the beginning of the school year, Kirker's sidearm throwing motion finally took its toll. She was in a cast for two weeks healing injured elbow tendons. Shortly after, she broke her nose.
"My game definitely got put on hold," says Kirker, who in the past has estimated she plays over 200 softball games a year with travel ball, high school and everything in between. "It was definitely frustrating, I didn't feel like I'd ever be the same again."
In order for her to be the same, Falcons Coach Dan Berry believes she needs to settle down her hectic softball schedule.
"She has to take some time to let her body heal," says the longtime Crescenta Valley skipper.
And if she does that?
"She'll be the same as she was," says fellow Falcons sophomore and friend Stephanie Ziemann.
Ziemann estimates she's known Kirker for roughly eight years, often as teammates throughout Little League and now, obviously, with the Falcons.
For Ziemann, Kirker's immediate success wasn't all that surprising.
"She's been a great player for however long," Ziemann says. "You expect the best and she does what she does."
Berry was well aware that he had a talented newcomer in Kirker coming to play for the Falcons. But he was still quite surprised by Kirker's overwhelming success, particularly the amount of runs she drove in.
"The [57] RBIs, coming through in the clutch, that was the remarkable thing," Berry says.
