SPRING COLLEGE REPORT: SOFTBALL/BASEBALL - A lot learned in first NCAA season

SPRING COLLEGE REPORT: SOFTBALL/BASEBALL

Thrust into a prominent role as a freshman, Martha Miller learned a lot in her first season as softball pitcher at the NCAA Division I level.

One of 12 first-year D-I players, including 10 freshmen, out of 23 players on the Green Bay Phoenix’s roster, Miller was expected to get time in the circle during the 2024 season. The 2023 graduate of Medford Area Senior High, however, wound up pitching a team-high 108 innings while posting a 3-12 record for the Phoenix, who finished 9-38 overall and 5-19 in the Horizon League.

Not surprisingly, youth was a big factor in Green Bay’s struggles under fifth-year head coach Sara Kubuske. That was particularly true for the pitching staff, which started the year with three sophomores and two freshmen and lost a couple of the sophomores to injury.

But for Miller, there was nothing better than to learn in the heat of fire. While there were some bumps in the road early, she felt –– and the numbers show –– she proved she belonged in the second half of the season.

“It was a growing experience this whole year,” Miller said. “Obviously transitioning from high school and club softball to the Division I level was a big jump, but I’d say it was really good for me to be able to pitch that amount. At the beginning of the year, it was like, ‘whoa, OK, we’re playing at a different level,’ but by the end of the year I felt I was settled and it was a lot more relaxed to be able to play with that experience.”

Miller wound up appearing in 25 of Green Bay’s 47 games, starting 14 of them. She threw six complete games. In her 108 innings, opponents had a .323 batting average against her with 147 hits and scored 102 runs, 81 of which were earned. Miller struck out 64 batters, walked 44 and hit 16. Her earned run average was 5.25.

Obviously the numbers don’t match those she put up as one of the state’s most dominant pitchers as a Medford Raider, nor would that be expected out of a pitcher making the jump straight from high school to the NCAA D-I level. Opposing hitters are just too good.

But that kind of competition improves players, which Miller said she certainly felt during the season.

“The biggest adjustment was you can never put the ball anywhere over the plate, even if it’s tucking it in on the corner of the plate,” Miller said. “You need to have it two to three balls off the plate to really keep the batters off-balance. If you miss anywhere on the plate, they’ll really capitalize on that no matter where that is. So I think the biggest adjustment was hitting those spots a little better. You can get away in high school and club ball with letting one slip here or there, but when you get to this level you can’t afford to let it slip or they’ll really take advantage of it. So kind of narrowing in those spots off the plate, working with movement a little more was really big.”

Miller’s NCAA baptism by fire came in her first outing. Green Bay opened the season at the Mardi Gras Mambo in Youngsville, La., and faced Southeastern Louisiana in the first game Feb. 8. Miller entered the game in the third inning with the Phoenix already down 5-0. She struck out the first hitter she faced, but two triples, a wild pitch, three singles and a double later, she was charged with six runs in one-third of an inning in a 13-0, fiveinning loss. Southeastern Louisiana wound up being a strong team, finishing with a 46-14 record and a win over Clemson in the NCAA College World Series before it lost twice to Alabama.

The next day, Miller got her first start and took the loss in a 6-1 defeat to Eastern Illinois. But the results were a little better as she went four innings, allowing five runs and seven hits with two strikeouts and four walks. Slowly but steadily after that, the numbers got better and Miller earned her first win Feb. 25 in a six-inning start against Long Island University in Green Bay’s final game at the Stetson Invitational in DeLand, Fla. She worked around eight hits, allowing two earned runs with six strikeouts and two walks in a 4-2 victory. The Sharks made Miller and the Phoenix sweat by loading the bases against her with no outs in the seventh, but reliever Paeton Kringel, a New London grad, got a couple of groundouts to pick up the save.

“That was pretty huge,” Miller said. “Those couple games before that were pretty big settling in. I didn’t feel that sturdiness under my feet right away, but to be able to pull that out, I feel like that was the turning point between the communication between my coach and really learning what I needed to do to kinda go back to being the pitcher I know I am and that I was in high school and club ball. I felt like I could finally breathe out there on the mound and I just had to play like myself.”

Miller got the relief win in a 10-7 victory at Robert Morris March 14, going 6.1 innings and allowing just one run and no walks on five hits while striking out two. Miller allowed one earned run in 5.1 innings while starting an 8-5 home loss to Northern Kentucky on March 22. She had eight strikeouts in relief in a 6-5 loss at Youngstown State on March 29. She appeared in two of three games in a home series with Cleveland State April 5-6, allowing one earned run in 4.2 innings while starting an 8-3 loss and allowing one run in 5.1 relief innings of a 6-0 loss.

On April 14, Miller threw a complete game in a 4-1 home loss to Oakland, allowing seven hits. She was the winning pitcher in an 11-10 slugfest with Purdue Fort Wayne April 26 and finished the year with an excellent outing at Detroit Mercy on May 4, going 6.1 innings, allowing six hits and three earned runs with four strikeouts and one walk. Unfortunately, her last pitch of the year was hit for a walk-off home run by Jaiden Lara in a 3-2 loss.

“Being able to spot that ball up in on batters’ hands and off the plate, I felt like I gained a lot more control,” Miller said. “In high school you can get away with slipping out the ball, but here you can’t get away with it. You have to have that kind of control and more drastic movement on the ball to be able to keep them off-balance. As the year went by, not only did I get settled in mentally where I was able to feel my feet underneath me on the mound and really lock in with my head, being able to lock in on my spots and get kind of dialed in that way.”

Where Miller goes from here is up in the air at this time. In May, Miller entered the NCAA transfer portal, a move made more from the academic side of things, rather than the athletic side because Green Bay dropped its economics program, where Miller was intending to major. So she is looking to find the right academic and athletic fit.

“I still have a few options but no decision made yet,” she said. “I’m not sure but I’m still obviously looking to play at the highest level that I’m able to at this point.

“One thing I’ve noticed in Division I softball is people want girls that have experience,” Miller added. “The more experience you have, the better you’ll be in the long run. While I wasn’t able to lock in that one ERA or two ERA, I think overall with the amount of innings that I had throughout the season really helped me to become a better player now as I look to continue to play these next three years.”

More updates

Also on the college diamonds this spring: Laurissa Klapatauskas, a 2022 Medford graduate, appeared in two games with the top softball squad at Loras College of Dubuque, Iowa.

Klapatauskas earned a three-inning save in a 9-1 win over Beloit College March 2 in a game played at UWOshkosh. She did not allow a hit, walked two and struck out one while inducing five flyouts and three ground-ball outs. At the plate, Klapatauskas was hitless in two atbats with a strikeout.

In a 3-2 loss to Montclair State, played March 12 at Kissimmee, Fla., Klapatauskas threw a scoreless top of the fifth inning with the only base runner reaching on an error.

The Duhawks went 20-16 overall and 7-9 in the American Rivers Conference. They finished seventh in the conference, one place shy of qualifying for the league’s post-season tournament. After two solid years with Madison College’s softball program, 2021 Gilman graduate Addison Warner landed with Columbia College in South Carolina. The NAIA program is a member of the Appalachian Athletic Conference. The Koalas went 25-22 overall this spring and 16-12 in conference play. They went 1-2 as the sixth seed in their conference tournament to end the season. Unfortunately due to an off-season injury, Warner did not play this season. She is listed as a pitcher on the team’s roster.

Michael Borchardt, a 2023 Rib Lake graduate, joined the baseball team at the University of Northwestern in St. Paul, Minn. this year. He got some limited action as a catcher with the Eagles’ top squad, playing in three games and starting one.

Borchardt started a March 9 game with Monmouth (Ill.) played at Fort Pierce, Fla. The Eagles won the seveninning game 7-6 by scoring twice in the top of the seventh. Borchardt went hitless in two official at-bats with two strikeouts and he had a sacrifice bunt. He also had an assist defensively, throwing out a runner at third.

He got two at-bats in a 22-2 loss to Gustavus Adolphus, striking out twice, plus he caught for three innings. He got an at-bat, hitting into a fielder’s choice, and caught for two innings in a 13-3 home loss to Augsburg on May 6.

The program’s varsity reserve team went 4-6-1 during the season.

Northwestern went 20-23 this spring, including a strong 16-5 mark in the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference, good for second place and the second seed in the four-team UMAC tournament, which the Eagles hosted May 9-11. Northwestern lost its opening game 12-0 to third-seeded UW-Superior, eliminated top-seeded Bethany Lutheran College 8-3 in a 13-inning thriller and then was eliminated by fourth-seeded and eventual champion Crown College 12-2.

Borchardt received a UMAC Academic All-Conference award for the winter/spring sports seasons. To earn UMAC All-Academic honors, a student-athlete must post a 3.50 or better grade point average during the semesters their sport was in season. The UMAC All-Academic Team awards are given to the programs that have the highest average GPA from the semesters the sport was in season, taking into account all athletes who used a year of eligibility. Northwestern’s baseball team received the UMAC All-Academic Team award with a 3.39 GPA, the highest amongst the baseball teams in the conference.

Laurissa Klapatauskas

Addison Warner

Michael Borchardt