In all fairness to the players on this roster, their families, and the other coaches, how do they feel about Piper Ritter as the Head Coach? Has she been able to do justice in her duties for both coaching positions since she accepted the HC position for the Gopher softball program?
1 - Is it a possibility the expectations of her assistant coaches hasn't been communicated efficiently throughout the seasons?
2 - Is it a possibility the development of these young pitchers has also been compromised?
Good question. We’ve never heard any rumblings like you see on other boards, so there’s that.
Let’s look at Piper’s tenure.
2021 - B1G refused to play any non-conference games, hurting the tournament chances of everyone, and especially sad for Amber Fiser. Yet were still one of only three B1G teams that made the tournament. Once there, we gave top seed UCLA a run for their money.
2022 - We came into the Fall of 2021 thinking we had Pease plus heralded fresh Leavitt to lead a staff that also included Ava Dueck and Brynn Hostetler. We set up a schedule that if navigated well, would have set us up for a top 8 seed. But Dueck retired due to chronic injury. Hostetler couldn’t find the plate must have thought playing at this level was too much and she transferred to Augsburg. Leavitt turned out to be one of those kids who thought she deserved to be at a better program, a cancer in the locker room. Pease had lingering issues from offseason surgery and was on a pitch count the entire season. We still made the tournament although as expected our lack of pitching depth killed us in the regional.
2023 - Great rebound year for Pease. Added Sydney Schwartz, Bri Enter, and Jacie Hambrick to cover the two unexpected losses plus the departure of Leavitt to Texas A&M of the SEC. Made the tournament and played pretty well but ran into an underseeded McNeese team that eventually had Washington beat before they realized what they were about to do and imploded in dramatic fashion. Had we been able to get past McNeese in extra innings, we could have challenged Washington with Autumn in the circle.
2024 - Brought in three frosh pitchers to start building the depth we will need in the future. I think more was expected of Hambrick, who has the stuff but not the command to be elite. Enter pitched better than at any point in her career but was shelved when we needed to make a run to make the tournament. Schwartz was out before conference play even started. Offensively, Piper’s best team. Defense was solid, but the combination of youth, injury, and inconsistency sealed our fate. Missed the tournament for then first time in over a decade.
It is pretty well known that Piper has Carly Wynn in charge of the offense. We play a power game, and we do it fairly well. I’d like to see us better in the small-ball game when needed and our situational hitting (moving runners over, getting runners in from third with less than two out, etc.) is average to poor. We have hitters who are confident enough to take strikes early in the count, but we do this even when we are facing top pitching or just a hot pitcher. In these cases, we may only see one hittable pitch in an at bat and we have to be ready to pounce if it happens to be the first pitch.
I think the jury is out on the development of the freshmen pitchers. With a season under their belt, it’s Piper’s job to tell them what they need to work on during the offseason. That’s when much of the improvement happens. It’s hard to work on mechanics during the season.
Add Susa and Schwartz to the freshmen, and next year is almost certainly a step up from this year. The question is how much.
Until the portal closes, and even after that if we are shopping the portal, you can’t really predict anything because you don’t have a roster.
But taking this approach to assessing the state of the program under Piper, Carly, and staff, it appears Piper has had some setbacks but overall has kept Minnesota softball in a pretty good place with an opportunity to get better. Barring mass portal defections that aren’t replaced with other good players from the portal, it seems she has laid a foundation for success in the future.
The only real criticism I have is that we need to recruit 1-2 pitchers every year to account for attrition. We didn’t bring any in prior to 2021 but that was somewhat to be expected as she had just taken over the reins and we were in the middle of the pandemic, so anyone we brought in would have committed under Trachsel. Since then, we brought in Leavitt, Schwartz, the three freshmen this year, amd Susa next year, an average of 1.5 per year, which is where we need to be going forward.
Can Carly find more players like Chavez and Oakland, who start (and produce) as freshmen? Minnesota has a recent tradition (Moulton, Walker, Richardson, Groenewegen, Parlich, Houlihan, Partain, Chavez, Oakland), of having contenders for B1G freshman of the year. We will need more of that going forward, as we obviously didn’t have that this season.
