The Best Softball Players I Covered

 Softball is a relatively recent love for me compared to basketball or football. I fully discovered the sport while working as a graduate assistant at Saint Francis University and the love affair has never ended. It has only grown stronger.

 All-time greatest players I've covered. Well, I covered softball pretty much every year from 2019 through 2026. I filled in in 2020. In 2021 I wasn’t the SID, but quite frankly should have been. Due to our main one being of uneven quality. A 40+ win team and the coverage was shoddy.

 But, somehow, said SID ended up working for a Power Four team. Such is the vanity of life and the power of quotas. So, what is the criteria? Well, any teams that were directly covered or years that I served as the director of operations (2021).

 So, unfortunately, any players before that do not fall under the criteria. Sorry Madison Cabell, you would have been first base, but that's not how this works. Teams I covered were Saint Francis and Bucknell. Saint Francis from 2019 to 2021, and Bucknell from 2023 to the present. I had an off year in 2022.

 Starting off at catcher.

 I started at the catcher because since the role is arguably the most important position on the diamond. And if you have a good catcher, you're generally going to have a good pitching staff. Catcher is quite easy for me. Zoie Smith of Bucknell. Zoie Smith is one of those players of whom the historical record won't list as having significant laurels. Unfortunately, she was only ever a Second Team Patriot League member.

 She deserved first team. The Boston catcher, who possessed teammates with the ability to get on base, sucked up the slots. There wasn't much more Zoie could do than bat well.

 She batted incredibly well, despite little protection behind her, and receiving few pitches worthy of her keen eye. In 2023, she finished 19th in the nation in doubles per game. A significant feat for a player who had very little support.

 But she was a lefty, and like most great lefty hitters possessed an arcing swing, that flowed through the strike zone and clobbered a significant number of pitches.

 Her senior year, she actually had 75% of the team's home runs. Of course, that was only three out of four. But still, Zoie was a potent hitter. She handled the pitching staff incredibly well.

 Her left arm gunned down many a potential base stealer. So that puts Zoie Smith as a type of catcher that deserved a spot in the Bucknell Hall of Fame. It is unlikely, due to the fact that her conference honors simply won't be that significant.

And her team, unfortunately, did not win many games while they were in the conference tournament several times. She was sharp-minded, intelligent. She was everything you wanted in a backstop.

You know, place her on some of the greatest Saint Francis teams and she mashes .360, has 10+ plus home runs, and is sure to follow a Hall of Famer in the batting lineup.

At first base, this might be surprising to people, but it's another Bucknellian. 

MaKenzie Hilling possessed not the size of a typical first baseman, but the zealous heart of a competitor. A ferocious team captain with a capable batting eye, she graduated with Bucknell's career record for walks. Hilling was the type of player, the type of first baseman that existed back in the dead ball era for baseball.

 She wasn't a power hitter, though she did have a home run in 2025 when the Bison knocked out Lehigh in the Patriot League Tournament. She knew how to get on base, hit for a decent average, work the count, and overall led with fiery example.

 At second base, I'd put Cheyenne McKee.

 Cheyenne was a player who did it all. An excellent example of leading by example. Cheyenne hit for average, hit for power, fielded, and could play any position.

 She played in the outfield as well at second base and did what the team needed her to do, which was perform. A better person than player, which is hard to believe, Cheyenne epitomized what Saint Francis Softball was in those glory years.

 Cheyenne was a machine dedicated to annihilating his opponents. The 2018 NEC Player of the Year, which surprisingly was a rare award for SFU softball stars, despite winning multiple championships.

 Shortstop, I'll have to go with the transfer of 2021, Jordan Petruchowski.

 Jordan Pietrzykoski was the epitome of pep and the type of player that, if she was not on your team, you would find horribly outrageous. But that was only the more reason for Red Flash fans to love her.

 She brought endless energy and a rebirth to a program that spent the COVID-abbreviated year searching how to survive in the new post-Hayley Norton era. She hit well, fielded her position, and locked down the left side of the infield with MeKenzie Saban. There's really not much more to say about JP other than she gave one of the best quotes in my St. Francis tenure with, “I love Jimmy John’s!”

Oh, I love Jimmy John’s. I loved watching Jordan Pietrzykoski play shortstop.

The third base pick is a pretty easy one. Mekenzie Saban.

Zoie Smith had a long, lengthy swing of a lefty. Saban's lefty swing was short, brutish, and just absolutely vicious to softballs.

She hit doubles like crazy, one of the league's best in the NCAA in every full-length season, becoming the NEC's double queen. A feat that I confirmed despite no longer employed at Saint Francis. Like I said, folks, good SIDs are rare.

She was probably the best pure hitter during Saint Francis' run of titles. She hit a few home runs as well, but her focus was just leading off, hitting above .400, and lashing at all kinds of balls. She walked occasionally, but really, with a hitter like Saban, you don't want her to walk.

You want her to hit pitches, to tell the world, this is who we are: a battalion of batters guaranteed to put 10-plus up on you. She got started in 2019 (sophomore year) and she never looked back.

In the outfield, starting in the left field, Hayley Norton, the NEC's home run queen. One of the reasons I spent most of 2019 tracking down record-setting milestone balls. She was an RBI machine as well, the perfect kind of cleanup hitter.

Destined to deliver all sorts of blows to the team. Hayley stole bases in her career, hit doubles, fielded well. Just an all-around great player.

Another lefty, her style was a bit like Zoie Smith. A lefty swing that was rather like Babe Ruth in its idea of, let's not worry about singles. Let's see how many launched angle homers we can place into the atmosphere.

If singles happen, so be it. We're going big game hunting. Her three-run double in the NEC final against Long Island won me my first ring.

It was a ball, that wasn't blasted, but it found a gap and kept rolling. It rolled and the bases cleared. She ended her career as a leader in everything.

Seeing as Saint Francis dropped down to Division III, she'll remain that.

Next up in center field, we have to go with Jordy Frank.

Jordy possessed the kind of glove that nabbed everything. A Skyhawk from DuBois, home of the McKee twins. Let it be said, every SFU ring came with a player from DuBois on the team. 

Jordy hit well. But her main job was to track down, dive, and annihilate all matters of line drives and fly balls. She caught the game-saving ball in the 2019 NEC Championship Game against Long Island.

 The Blackbirds were storming back before she nabbed a ball that halted their rally. She continued, as she was just a sophomore on that team, to play large roles in the 21 and 22 titles.

It's really not hard to look at Jordy and see the reason why Saint Francis' softball was great. She might not have been one of the A-plus superstars. But you don't have a dynasty with just three or four of those.

You have a dynasty with loads of other players that you can pencil into the lineup without care or concern. That was Jordy Frank.

And in right field, we have Sierra McKee, the other half of the McKee twin pairing.

Sierra was, as I dubbed her, the Countess of Clutch. She hit numerous grand slams, including one against New Mexico State for the first NCAA-win in Saint Francis' history.

Needless to say, if she needed a big hit, Sierra McKee would deliver. The type of vibrant devotion that only all-time players can provide. She hit homers, she hit doubles, she walked.

Oh, and she even floated in as catcher, occasionally. And despite her thoughts on the matter, did a bang-up job.

You win a lot of games with Sierra McKees. And that, my friends, counts for something.

 Pitchers. I'll go with a three-woman rotation here, because I think three works out well and it is a magic number

First of all, the #1 pitcher, Grace Vesco. Grace, the ace.

Grace Vesco, 2021, is as dominant as I've ever seen a pitcher be. She had a 1.00 ERA, and frankly, that should have been lower. The Akron scorer blatantly called an error hit, costing her two unearned runs.

Yeah, I'm still sore about it. Grace just left opponents in the proverbial dust. In the game that year against Bowling Green, she out-dueled Payton Gottshall, who now pitches in the AUSL, in a one-nothing classic that I had the pleasure of broadcasting on Facebook Live.

Many times, there were opponents, especially in the NEC, who went up and either didn't swing or half-heartedly swung, knowing they had no chance against the fearsome fastball that she could just unload upon opponents. She was the type of pitcher who showed no mercy when she was on, and displayed no mercy. She was easily the queen.

Second pitcher was her fellow teammate, Rachel Marsden. And you can't spell Rachel without ace.

 

Rachel was an ace as well. Conquering the second game after Grace won the first.

I mean, it was pretty easy living. Grace pitches the first, Rachel pitches the second, boom. Rachel also had offensive capabilities as well.

But as a pitcher, she was fantabulous. I'd also list Rachel as my DH due to that reason. But she did not hit when I was working at Saint Francis.

She was the type of player with a bulldog mentality. She might not have possessed Grace's pure talent, but she made up for it with a desire to have the ball. I loved her Pennsylvania grit that intensified her ability.

I loved watching her pitch, loved watching her hit from afar. And she could even field.

Third and final pitcher is easily Madison Roukey from Bucknell.

 Madison Roukey pitched, finished her career in the top ten in most Bucknell categories. She didn't have the gross win totals of Grace or Rachel. Again, wins and losses are often, even in softball, based on your team.

Maddie the Baddie, as I coined her after her ten strikeouts against Holy Cross in 2023, knew she had to usually keep things under two or three runs to win. She possessed a lot of guile, strength, and a desire to win.

Even more impressive was her backstory, losing her father during 2020 to a senseless shooting. But you would never know that after seeing Maddie, who wore a perpetual smile on her face, and still does. She was fun to watch.

She delivered a 1-0 win over Lehigh in 2024 Patriot League Tournament in the opening game. One of the best pitching outing I've seen live. She handcuffed the team that knocked her out of the box earlier in the year.

She was a great player, a great, even better person. And a pitcher who went out there and understood the assignment and made do with it. 

That's my starting lineup. I think I'm winning a lot of titles.